We all know what we saw.
It snowed one day.
Then the snow stayed.
Temperatures that never got higher than freezing kept the yards and fields white, the chunky piles of plowed snow crowding the road’s edge.
The first day, the paper didn’t get delivered because of hazardous road conditions. The next morning, I missed the fact that two papers were delivered, because the rolled up papers were covered by a second snowfall.
Walking up Blakemore toward the BP to pick up a copy of The News Leader, I could feel the cold air wrap around my eyeballs and slide under my eyelids.
Day after day, there was a feeling that nothing was going to change for a long time. The snow on the ground, the cold, the cold.
There was a word wandering toward my consciousness in those days, especially as I took my dogs out before the sun rose, and saw the snow glistening in the pre-dawn light.
It comes from a time we haven’t seen for several years. When snow would fall and stay, when we’d move our warmest coat and gloves to a rack near the front door or breezeway or mudroom. When we’d check to make sure we still had a snow shovel handy and enough salt to keep the ice off our walkways.