Helloooooo SNOW!
Yes, it's just gotta hit when it ain't expected. Not that it wasn't expected entirely, I mean of course the weather forecasters and all them told us it was coming, but in a abstract way of looking at it, of course NOTTTTT I mean it's just gotta be spring now, at least around the corner. We had enough (in a manner of speaking) of winter, didn't we?
Oh you poor children of this world who cannot experience this phenomenon. Yes, sure, for many of us world weary snow experiencers, it becomes no more than the regular mundane experience, so much that it unbecomes an experience by itself. It becomes a taken for granted commodity, as regular as air to breath, and water to drink. It goes to some points of being a vexation, a pain in the ... areas we no longer are able to feel due to the numbing effects of the cold.
Still a lover of snow. Even if I find it unbearably cold at times (read: forgotten gloves). I expect, or rather, hope, that I will always be a lover of snow. There is just some element of beauty that just can't go unappreciated, even when it means hours waiting for a bus, or yards trudging through sock-drenching sludge. Even when it ruins a great hairstyle, or flies in ones eyes when attempting to cross traffic, and having to hop skip jump over icy pools of water with something akin to olympic skills while beating a flashing "cross" sign that is ticking down its final seconds and warning not to cross. Beyond reproach, I love it! I love having to wake up that tad bit earlier to clean the car, to shovel the driveway, to having to gear up with those extra layers, which not available, have to be sought and found, because in the end, it is just so worth it. Even if it stings my eyes, makes my nose pink, and clings to my eyelashes, I love it.
I don't like taking anything for granted, and this is one of the things that I know I do, sometimes. It becomes a more favoured entry in the daily grind of life, because it is not so daily. Admittedly, the first snow of any year is by far and wide my favourite of snows. Perhaps it goes into that category of 'firsts', like your first best friend, your first love, your first kiss, and your first heartbreak. Firsts are hard to come by, because once they happen, there is no repeat performance. Firsts are firsts, and firsts after that first become only seconds or mere thirds.
So how does a repeating first fit in this? Not exactly sure, but suppose that adds to its charm. If you appreciate a thing enough, I guess its importance does not diminish entirely when admired for its full worth. Like the sun rising every morning. We take that for granted even if we do not admit it. We say we appreciate it, we can say that we love it, and thank the 'forces that be' that it 'is'. But do we really expect that one day we could wake up to no sun at all? We could consider it as a theory, a possibility, but because we have, without fail, gone through so many 100% showings of the sun every day of our life, our faith in it continuing continues.
Which reminds me, I had this amazingly strange dream a few nights ago. Not anything really new for me, as with almost everything else, I'm an avid dreamer. Not just the daydreaming and hoping type, but the night subconscious type. (And of a foreseeing dreamer type as well!)
Aside from the people in it and circumstances around them, was the emotion. Freedom. Not the full extent of freedom that one seeks. But an appreciative type. The world was sleeping and in the hours before dawn, I left the house through the backyard. In reality, my backyard lies on the edge of a big area of fields, and a park borders one edge of it. In the dream, all the trees in the parkland were blossoming into cherry blossoms, beautiful white and pink flowers, and showering themselves down on me. The moon was at its fullest, and shining like newly polished silver, and the stars were at their brightest. Beauty of this sort never fails to take my breath away, and even in dreams, I hadn't yet seen this.
I can't explain how wondrous it felt, and even on an everyday sort of way, there is something about outdoors or nature that instills in me some sense of peace and serenity. Even at some lower points in life, it could just take the clouds waving away from a crescent moon to get me to stop in my tracks and wish to just lay there and watch the sky for hours. There is just some magic pull about the lights above that seem to lighten emotional and physical loads, like the way the moon pulls at tides, ebbing and flowing.
The second part of the dream that gave me this feeling was that despite it being winter, for there were piles of snow all over the fields, was that it was raining, and it was hot. Not just the rain, but the wind, the air, everything was distinctly warm. I don't know why it made me feel good, and left me with a good feeling when I awoke, but it did. That feeling of lifting one's face to the sky and feeling the rain beat down. Especially with those cherry blossoms.
Granted, I could put on the shower and emulate the feeling. But it's just not the same.
Maybe it is just because I love everything there is to be found in and of nature. The rain. The snow. The sunshine. The clouds. The rainbows. The storms. The everything. The end.
I guess it could be because so far there isn't an end. Nature is so consistently inconsistent, it's forever a variable element that surprises and pleases. Not everyone, but certainly me.
