[Asides] First Snowfall
Nov. 5th, 2010 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
historizeAmerica is a summer nation. He's in the prime of his life, still young and strong. He's only got a few scars. A few aches. A few pains.
Compared to those around him, of course.
He often feels his youth. But sometimes that isn't always bad. Sometimes, he can revel in it.
He still has a childlike fascination with the first snowfall of the season. Everyone acts like Russia and Canada and the northern Europeans are the only ones who understand snow.
But seriously, all of America's northern states get a taste of the white stuff every year. They love the stuff.
He loves the stuff.
A summer nation he may be--known for his southern sun and western deserts but there is nothing, to him, that quite compares to the first snowfall. Whether it sticks or not isn't the point, what matters is that for a few glorious moments, when he's in Indiana's northern region, almost near the Michigan border, he pulls his truck over and walks out to a corn field--recently harvested, so it still smells sweet--and he looks up.
White bits fall all around him, like fairy dust (or what he imagines fairy dust is like), the tail of a comet, star light.
He reached out his bare hands into crisp November air and lets it fall and melt onto his skin.
It doesn't last long--and maybe that's the bittersweet part of it. The real snows won't start (at least not in northern Indiana) until later. But it's one of those things.
He can feel the wonder of young people from the south that are in college up north and they run outside to see this thing that they have never witnessed. They call their moms and talk about it, how beautiful it is. How soft and pretty and cold! So cold! (And that will be their focus in a few weeks, forget pretty--it's so cold!)
While his northerners smile and can't help but peer out. In offices, at campuses, in households, at retailers, people stop together and go to peer out the windows at something so simple as snowfall.
How extraordinary that such a small thing can bring people together to smile and look and point.
He loves it.
Compared to those around him, of course.
He often feels his youth. But sometimes that isn't always bad. Sometimes, he can revel in it.
He still has a childlike fascination with the first snowfall of the season. Everyone acts like Russia and Canada and the northern Europeans are the only ones who understand snow.
But seriously, all of America's northern states get a taste of the white stuff every year. They love the stuff.
He loves the stuff.
A summer nation he may be--known for his southern sun and western deserts but there is nothing, to him, that quite compares to the first snowfall. Whether it sticks or not isn't the point, what matters is that for a few glorious moments, when he's in Indiana's northern region, almost near the Michigan border, he pulls his truck over and walks out to a corn field--recently harvested, so it still smells sweet--and he looks up.
White bits fall all around him, like fairy dust (or what he imagines fairy dust is like), the tail of a comet, star light.
He reached out his bare hands into crisp November air and lets it fall and melt onto his skin.
It doesn't last long--and maybe that's the bittersweet part of it. The real snows won't start (at least not in northern Indiana) until later. But it's one of those things.
He can feel the wonder of young people from the south that are in college up north and they run outside to see this thing that they have never witnessed. They call their moms and talk about it, how beautiful it is. How soft and pretty and cold! So cold! (And that will be their focus in a few weeks, forget pretty--it's so cold!)
While his northerners smile and can't help but peer out. In offices, at campuses, in households, at retailers, people stop together and go to peer out the windows at something so simple as snowfall.
How extraordinary that such a small thing can bring people together to smile and look and point.
He loves it.
