SNOW DAZE

It started snowing on February 3rd.  I think we had three dumps in a row.  It's been only 10 days, but feels like forever.  Well, "forever" in a Pacific Northwest lowlands kind of way, where snow is rare and when it does accumulate (maybe about 3 inches max) it lasts like three days.  But here we are on February 13th and we've officially recorded 20.2 inches of snow this month -- the most since the whopper Blizzard of 1916 when 35.4 inches blanketed the region.  (We also had a few days last week of not breaking 32 degrees -- unheard of!)

As I write at this moment there's still about 10 inches of snow in our yard, even after yesterday's partial melt.  And now I hear the familiar and oddly sweet sound of rain coming down on my roof.  That's gonna make a mess of heavy, wet snow and slush to push off our long, steep driveway!

Rain is what it's supposed to be doing in the winter in the PNW.  I complain about it a fair amount.  Dark, gloomy, wet ... but I'm glad for it now.  The snow has been utterly beautiful; also treacherous and disruptive.  Kids are on Day 5 of No School.  Businesses and governmental offices have been closed.  Performances, church services, and social events have been cancelled.  Cars have crashed, semis jack-knifed (one setting free a load of live chickens on the interstate!), mountain passes closed, stranding travelers in their cars overnight.  A major pass over the Cascades got 5 feet of snow in 48 hours, causing the interstate to be impassible due to just too much snow to remove in a timely manner and the danger of avalanches, which were happening regularly higher up and threatening the highway.

I spent a tense few days wondering how I was going to make it back and forth to my weekend Yoga Teacher Training in a town 12 miles east of where I live.  We go for three hours on Thursday night, then 8 hours each on Friday and Saturday, and 8-1/2 hours on Sunday.  It's not a residential training; we commute, some only a few blocks and some up to 30 miles.  I fretted and stewed about this mostly because of the hill where we live and my long forgotten "skills" with snow and ice driving.  Sure I grew up in northern Illinois and dug myself out of plenty of snowbanks, but this weather is the reason we left there.  And I've been away from all that since 1980.  Plus, Illinois is flat; western Washington not so much; icy hills everywhere and not nearly enough snowplows.  I was a Nervous Nelly.

I was hoping it would be cancelled, like every single other thing scheduled over this past weekend.  But NO!  Yoginis are intrepid!  All agreed to forge ahead.  A dear friend, my teacher, trainer, and Yoga blog "boss" who owns the studio where I practice and is co-sponsor of the teacher training, took pity on me and offered me her guest room for the duration.  No commute!

But the best part is that she lives in an historical old Catholic church that she and her partner have renovated over the past 20+ years.  The sanctuary has become an art and performance space, as well as our teacher training location.  The rest of the building is their home.  Both are artists and it was like staying in a place of supreme comfort, wonder, and healing.  Everywhere the eye landed was a new place of quiet beauty. I was also surrounded by caring people, lively conversation, much laughter, piles of pasta and rich dark chocolate. Just what I needed since I'd been plunged into the black hole of depression just prior to the training.  Plus, yoga...the very practice is balm to mind, body, and spirit.

So, I more than survived the weekend.  I left the training exhausted from the focused attention I have to give to the teaching, but no longer depressed.  And I came home to a blissfully empty house (Hub gone on another snowboarding adventure) which also helped center and ground me back into my life.

It did keep snowing and I took dozens of photos and posted them to FB as did others.  This was a novel event for us and I think beauty and novelty need to be documented.  I mostly have stayed indoors, only going out to feed my birds and shovel a path for our mail carrier of 30 years.  (I also left him a thank you note and packets of hot chocolate, because for some there are no snow days.)

I expect the Seattle Snowpocalypse Snowmageddon will melt away in the coming week or so.  But the meme and T-shirt business will remind us of what we all lived through.  And just like good Seattleites, we will return to the familiar drip, drip, drip of winter, sipping our lattes, and telling tales of survival.

At least, that's the view from here...©