First Snow
Congratulations to the east coast, on your first dump of the season.
Living in San Mateo, we drive to the snow. It gets chilly enough here, to justify a winter fire. I know it's not the most environmentally conscious thing to do, but hey, fire is natural. Momma Nature has 4 elements and likes them all equally well. Only man, in our dense urban, petroleum-based existence, fret about a few home fires. If only curtailing the burning of a few logs was the solution.
Pacific Coast winter skies are often crystalline clear. Oh great benevolent Pacific, do you never get pissed off? Instead of a blanket of snow, we sometimes have dense, ground hugging, Tule fog. It's a special morning when we can go out back and see the valley below as a white, silent river. In the High Sierra, staring into deep space on a clear night is better than being an astronaut.
As winter sets in back east, I would rarely look to the skies. Normally there's very little there to see. A cellblock ceiling of gray. Yet I do miss the excitement of that first snowfall. The lunge into winter. The media tries to make it into a mini-disaster; which is ludicrous. It's a celebration. Slush sucks; but snow boots were fun. Galoushes (sp?) are wrong.
One year in high school, I broke all the tarsals in my left foot, playing soccer. I still had a walking cast on, when the first snow fell. At the same time, the first solo Lennon album came out. Or, at least, I bought it at that first snow of the season. Me and two friends hiked through the woods (and over a stream, not a river) to another friends house, to play it for the first time. It's a beautiful winter record. My cast disintegrated in the wet and my toes were nearly frostbit. I had to have the cast reset. My doctor was very annoyed with me. To this day, my foot isn't completely 'right.' I can look down at my left toes, pointing to 10 o'clock, and remember "Remember." Could that first-snow listening session have been on the 5th of November?