Storm

It’s a storm fit for King Lear to go out and rage in. The snow started around ten last night.  We had good warning of the nor’easter heading our way. School closings were announced early yesterday.  Folks stocked up and cancelled plans.  The wind has been blowing hard and gusting all day, full of snow and more snow.  The wind raises big clouds of snow off the ground and mixes them with the falling snow – although falling is hardly the word for snow being blown horizontally.  The gusts create wild eddies of dense snow reaching a dozen feet and more above the ground.  The drifts are ridged like sand dunes. Snow sticks to everything the wind blasts it at, the window screens, the wooden slats of the barn siding. It is forecast to last well into the night, and there were predictions of as much as 20 inches.

I have been thinking about the pair of geese that landed on the neighbor’s pond this week.  We saw them out in Zen’s pasture on Wednesday browsing in the grass on a sixty degree afternoon. They will be hunkered down somewhere in their down vests. I can just hear her complaining – We should have listened to my mother and stayed in Florida for another week!

But snow in March is the norm, so the local creatures will have been expecting it.  It’s not the norm for our short haired California dog. He’s sleeping through the day, huddled up next to Jay, waiting for this to pass. I saw that the wind had swept the space in front of the garage clear this morning, so I took him out to the garage and opened the door for him. He barely even looked out, turned back and peed on the tire of Dan’s tractor.  I can’t say I blame him.

Weather shapes the days here, at least at this season. Today is a day for lying low, for drinking tea and listening to the wind huff and puff and try to blow our house down.  From the safety of a warm living room with a generator for backup it’s easy to feel complacent about the storm.  But for anyone who has to be out in it, it must feel like a serious enemy. We haven’t seen a single car on Gulf Road all day.

Now about that sunny picture of Jay in shirt sleeves at our favorite bakery… that’s from Tuesday.  Bread Alone is two hours away, in Boiceville in the Catskills.  Aviva and Peter introduced us to it years ago when they brought bread and pies to Amenia, and we have made pilgrimages there on many of our trips east.  By Tuesday the snow from last week was nearly all melted.  It was warm and the roads were dry.  On a whim (mine) we set out for Bread Alone after lunch. It’s at least a little crazy to drive four hours round trip for four loaves of rye bread, even fabulous rye bread.  But it was a beautiful drive, and we came home on a route new to us and saw some pretty country we had not yet seen.

In other news, last Sunday we went to Cooperstown to hear one of the Democratic Candidates for Congress from district 19. Gareth Rhodes is a self-confident, energetic young man, raised on a farm in the southern part of this huge, sprawling, rural district (a district larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined). He was well prepared and had done his homework about the district and his Republican opponent (the incumbent).  We missed earlier sessions with the other Democratic candidates, but I’d be happy to see this young man prevail in the primary and to see him go nose to nose with John Fasso, about whom I can find nothing good to say.  We’re hoping that we two new Democrats can help swing the district this year.

It’s still snowing.