The ice clings so treacherous and glistening, like knife blades or razors, honed and sharpened by the rain. Yesterday we stoked up the fire in the woodstove and prayed for warmer weather or less precipitation.
I have seen freezing rain and an ice storm. It came in the night, sealing the world in a hard glassy shell, each individual twig on each individual branch, each rose hip, each pine needle, each wire and each grass stem that had managed to stand above the blanket of powdery snow were encased in clear frozen water. I felt an urge to suck on icicles, to stomp holes in the ice coating the snow covering the grass.
Never have I encountered the strange sensation of freezing rain. The temperature read 25* but it was raining, and as soon as the droplets hit the snow they crystallized into ice. A terrible combination, especially since the previous snow had been light and powdery, and the ice formed an inch-thick crust with a hollowness beneath it.
We have a house guest, and in a most good-natured way I'm blaming him for the inclement weather. He spent New Year's Eve with us and the following day we had four inches of snow.
B lived in the upstairs of the building we leased for the coffeehouse, & he & S engaged in wild long discussions about politics and religion. B moved away in June and we heard from him on occasion, but he fell out of contact until his girlfriend's mother called the day before Christmas & asked if we could put him up for a few days. In October he had contacted a crazy aunt and asked for help, and didn't know she was crazy or a scientologist who would essentially kidnap him and put him in a detox center somewhere in Oklahoma. In the detox center they tried to brainwash him but he said the framed pictures of "that fat freak cult leader" kept him grounded and despite the terrible food and psycho-bullshit babble and withdrawal sickness he managed to keep his head together.
His girlfriend's mom got him bus fare to Oregon, but because of the weather he got to stay in an unheated Red Cross shelter in Redding for two nights.
He slept for eighteen hours straight when he finally arrived. He's thin as a rail and has a rattling cough and big circles beneath his eyes but we're working on that. Eat, eat, S says. Have more, I says. He's healing.
The sun came brilliant this morning, shining through the spindles and spires of ice, glittering against the cold white slick of snow on rooftops and roads. Steam is rising from the storm drains and car hoods and tires leave wet tracks in the slush, but it is melting and the temperature is rising. The river is rising too, and if all this snow melts today then we'll have a problem of another sort, but for now the earth and trees are sighing with release from their icy encasement.
I have seen freezing rain and an ice storm. It came in the night, sealing the world in a hard glassy shell, each individual twig on each individual branch, each rose hip, each pine needle, each wire and each grass stem that had managed to stand above the blanket of powdery snow were encased in clear frozen water. I felt an urge to suck on icicles, to stomp holes in the ice coating the snow covering the grass.
Never have I encountered the strange sensation of freezing rain. The temperature read 25* but it was raining, and as soon as the droplets hit the snow they crystallized into ice. A terrible combination, especially since the previous snow had been light and powdery, and the ice formed an inch-thick crust with a hollowness beneath it.
We have a house guest, and in a most good-natured way I'm blaming him for the inclement weather. He spent New Year's Eve with us and the following day we had four inches of snow.
B lived in the upstairs of the building we leased for the coffeehouse, & he & S engaged in wild long discussions about politics and religion. B moved away in June and we heard from him on occasion, but he fell out of contact until his girlfriend's mother called the day before Christmas & asked if we could put him up for a few days. In October he had contacted a crazy aunt and asked for help, and didn't know she was crazy or a scientologist who would essentially kidnap him and put him in a detox center somewhere in Oklahoma. In the detox center they tried to brainwash him but he said the framed pictures of "that fat freak cult leader" kept him grounded and despite the terrible food and psycho-bullshit babble and withdrawal sickness he managed to keep his head together.
His girlfriend's mom got him bus fare to Oregon, but because of the weather he got to stay in an unheated Red Cross shelter in Redding for two nights.
He slept for eighteen hours straight when he finally arrived. He's thin as a rail and has a rattling cough and big circles beneath his eyes but we're working on that. Eat, eat, S says. Have more, I says. He's healing.
The sun came brilliant this morning, shining through the spindles and spires of ice, glittering against the cold white slick of snow on rooftops and roads. Steam is rising from the storm drains and car hoods and tires leave wet tracks in the slush, but it is melting and the temperature is rising. The river is rising too, and if all this snow melts today then we'll have a problem of another sort, but for now the earth and trees are sighing with release from their icy encasement.
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