The First Snow

It is only November first, and already soft drifts of snow float down outside my window.  I am at home, in Southshore Lake Tahoe just three days after my 29th birthday and as I watch each tiny fleck I feel as if I am gazing out into a large and wondrous snowglobe.  The snow seems to hover in the darkness as if borne on tiny wings, the wind casting it to and fro to land upon the roofs in thick clumps.  It has only been an hour and it is already thick as a pillow blanket. 

This is the best weather for writing that I can imagine.  There is nothing quite like sitting in the black of night, with snow whipping outside.  There's a fire in the fireplace, hot cocoa ready at my convenience, life is pretty good.  I can sit without a worry in the world and concentrate upon my work.  Its Christmas kind of weather, so far from the sunny and probably warm and hot of San Luis Obispo where I live. 

We don't really have seasons back at home, which is something I do miss terribly.  We basically have summer, indian summer, a semi-winter, and an allergy season (which is part of summer.)  There's no fall color, there's no snow.  We sometimes get hail or a freeze, but nothing like this.  I think that this is the sort of weather that appeals to most of us when we think of warm and cozy. 

Tomorrow, I will wake to a world of white.  Where everything will be clean, cold and crisp.  Everything will be blanketed in a thick waist high layer of snow.  Kids will be out sledding, making snowballs, and animals will probably be gathering what foodstuffs they can for this strange "early" winter.  I can step outside for a moment and take in the lovely white, cold, and then step back into my comfortable space and look out to the wonders of the first snow.