Looking at all the glorious snow that has been falling it feels as if I’ve gotten my Christmas present. Heaven, to me, is being out in the woods in a place like the Berkshires (preferably the Bash Bish Falls), hearing the wind moaning through bare branches, walking over a mound of ice frozen on a slope, and watching the snow fall here and into the infinite-seeming space behind me into guts of the country.
I was just at the Weston ski track outside Boston, skiing at night as the snow fell. It was so much fun I felt like one of the young kids there zipping neatly by me on while skate-skiing. So, it grieves me to think whale oil’s successor, petroleum, is turning up the global furnace and risks denying me this delightful, glorious, bleak season.
But for now, here we are with lots of snow. With the usual wobbly unpredictability of the region (and global warming), we’re due for rain, as those secular prophets, the weathermen, tell us. That will ruin all that lovely snow. Hopefully, they’ll prove to be as reliable as religious prophets and we’ll keep our snow. I want to reach to those white mounds and protect them, cover them all over and hide them from the rain, the way a farmer would his beloved crops when threatened with hail.
Obviously, that’s not going to happen. Instead, maybe I’ll just renew my memberships in the Sierra Club and Greenpeace.
Marc Songini 