New Haven's Winter

02.13.06

Yesterday I was suppose to fly out but was completely snowed in in Connecticut. The snow started on Saturday night and continued on till Sunday evening, gathering up to anywhere from fifteen inches to over twenty-four inches. My brother called to say that he was shoveling snow nonstop from ten in the morning until way past noon. At the beginning, the snow went up to his knee caps. My brother is six foot three, and he doesn’t have stubby legs.

It was the nice fluffy snow that blew around lightly, and it endlessly kept pouring down. It was easy cleaning the snow off the Volvo because it didn’t harden, but instead, it lightly stacked on top of each other. It was wonderful to look at especially with the blanket of white everywhere and the calm silence that comes along with it. Somehow snow deadens all sounds, partially because cars aren’t around driving around anymore and all the birds and animals are all tucked away hidden. The snow covers the windows, the roofs, leaves, trees, and everything becomes hushed. You get a sense that time has stopped and everything has come to a frozen halt except for the white speckled snow that still lightly floats down around you. The only thing you can hear is the wind, your breathing, and your steps. And also the wind is only the air around your ears and not the air cutting across the trees or buildings. Everything has been deaden with a carpet of snow. Everything is super duper white, clean white, almost pristine. The air is extremely crisp and fresh. You get a sense of awe when you look around. You’d never thought there were so many shades of white all around you. Somehow everything that used to have rough features becomes automatically soft and innocent in style. The old buildings look priestly as it hovers over you, and the big pine trees look like edible sugary powdered trees all sprinkled head to toe with snow. Unfortunately, this will probably the last time that I will ever see such a fine beautiful thing in New Haven. This will probably be the last time I will see Yale covered so finely white ever again.
Yesterday was New Haven at its absolute winter’s best.