civilized ku # 356-57 ~ more fresh snow pictures
Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 10:10AM 
More fresh snow • click to embiggen
More fresh snow • click to embiggenMore pictures from yesterday's fresh snow event.
If you have never experienced a fresh snow event like the one pictured here, you should know that when fresh snow blankets every surface, the world exists in a very unworldly quiet. The snow absorbs and dampens sound to an astoundingly effective degree. It is quite disconcerting and a bit disorienting as well.
The other thing that often accompanies a fresh snow event is very mild temperatures in the 28-30˚F-ish range and a complete absence of wind. A combination, weather-wise, that allows me to wander about the landscape in a short sleeve t-shirt and a light fleece vest which creates an additional disconcerting / semi out-of-whack feeling / experience.
If I hadn't been without a car yesterday - it's in the body shop for a repair to an anonymously gifted parking lot fender ding - I would have gone for a hike in the woods just to luxuriate / revel in the fresh snow altered state experience.
Reader Comments (2)
The quiet, and the smell. That's what fresh snow brings to mind for me.
Speaking of altered state, this reminds me of Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" my absolute favorite bit of Zen prose.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.