SNOWBOUND IN VALATIE

         I am sitting at my window. The snow is falling again. The white glare from outside lights my screen, bringing to mind Russell Baker's quote that has been in my memory for so many years. In 1968, as Messrs. Nixon, Humphrey and Wallace crisscrossed our country, Baker wrote, "It's snowing and the wolf is at the door." Baker used that figure of speech to talk about that time when all was dark and there seemed to be few good answers.

         I haven't any answers either. Snow began falling again this morning; according to the man on the television there are already three inches on the ground in Hudson, twelve miles south. I have been out already, taking mail to the post office, filling the car with gasoline, and picking up a few supplies. As I put the foodstuffs away into larder, I curse myself. I forgot to buy lettuce for salad. I look about the house for a volunteer to go back out in the storm, but realize I am the only one who can drive. I have a lot of flat leaf parsley; I suppose I can make a salad with that.

         I never have watched the News at noon before this year, but in this snowy winter I don't miss it. I get cranky as the producer feeds us a report about stethoscopes being replaced by some electronic device. I want to see the weather; the lead item earlier was the storm. Remote cameras showed the Schnectady City Hall, where the mayor has come under fire because the snow from Christmas still clogs the streets. The weatherman made a cameo at that point and promised to return with more weather news, but now a furniture company is advertising a sale. I think to myself that I could hitch up the dogsled and buy a new futon.

         The dog is outside on her chain; she is lying down, her head on her paws. She rushed out when I trudged through the white to get the mail out at the road, eighty feet from the house. She wanted a drink of water from her bowl outside. Our temperature must have warmed a little; the liquid I added about ten o'clock when I returned from the store has not frozen yet. She has gotten up and found something to bark about down the road, and now she is squatting, melting some of the ice. By some miracle, she does not bark to come in as Howie, the meteorologist, gives the bad news.

         "Double digits everywhere," is his diagnosis. Maps flash on the screen; different color oblongs show that people in the Catskills and farther west can expect eighteen inches plus. My house is in the broad central span labeled fourteen to twenty-four; were I a few miles away and on the eastern slope of the Taconics or Berkshires, I might get off with less, but it is too late to move.

         "’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Someone profits by every loss; someone is benefited by every misfortune." My Ms. Profiteer was talking to the Freihofer breadman in the market this morning. "Oh I love it. Everything is so lovely and soft." I had a picture in my mind of his dark-red truck, tobogganing down one of the county's rural roads, bread falling all around him as he took his wares to another store. I am sure at that moment the deliveryman, one of the world's great optimists, would join me in my desire to shove my snow shovel up a certain part of that woman's anatomy.

         Our normal snowfall for a winter is sixty-one inches; forty-seven had already fallen by the end of December. I live in a northern clime, and should accept the bad with the good. Last winter was mild with little snow; I did not celebrate then, so why should I bitch now? Going back to the year before last, I find an account I wrote of another snowstorm in that winter. My wife was in the hospital. Hope was running out for her. I was alone that day and night, but there is an excitement to my writing. It is the thrill of a man without a better place to be.

         Yesterday I returned from that better place. It's raining in Pam's part of New Jersey today. On Christmas when twenty-one inches piled up here and I had to dig my way into my house, two to three inches covered her landscape. It was gone by New Year's Eve when I was there. The thermometer in my car read 56 degrees at 3 p.m. that day. New Years brought rain and a wonderful dinner, after which lassitude kept us glued to the couch. At six I could wait no longer to leave. A call to Margaret, near home, brought word that it was raining here and later would turn to ice. I drove ten miles and realized that it was better to spend another night in paradise. I grabbed my cellphone to call Pam but before I could dial, it rang. "Come back to my house; it is not a fit night to drive."

         "Better place" and “paradise” are relative terms. They are those places where our hearts reside. If Pam were here now, we would ape the Pollyanna woman at the market. Countless cups of tea and hot chocolate would be drunk as we sat at my table and watched the snow. Pam would be sure to rustle up a warm dinner, while I took the poor dog out into the snow for her walk. After I put on dry clothes, the couch would beckon. My video collection would keep us entranced as we snuggled under Aunt Angel's Afghan until time for sleep. I don't possess Pam's wonderful quilts, but I would pile enough blankets on the bed to keep us warm.

         For now I have to be satisfied with Baker's wolf, which resembles nothing so much as my shaggy sheepdog, covered with snow and ready to come inside. The couch where Pam and I cuddled on Christmas Eve will be doused with flakes that the beast is sure to shake off only when she gets in the house. I will put up with it; the couch will dry by spring. In the meantime, the long range forecast has come through. Better days are ahead for us. The white stuff will melt and the land will be green again. The snow will be replaced by a shower, followed by a rainbow. Pam and I will emerge from our shelter, hearts joined, ready to find that better place.

Valatie Jan 3, 2003