Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. . .

Excerpt from The Snow-Storm, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first thing, after the unloading from the car, is a walk into the woods,, dry and rumpled, crinkled and brown. We are home before the storm and happy to be out of the car into the fresh air. It’s warmer, so much warmer, than Montreal. We scuff along through the leaves, and passing the brook, I stop to look into the brook at the thin circles of ice and the tree’s reflection. The snow will fall, inevitably, as we walk, but not yet. The December afternoon grows dark. I meet my friend and her dogs in the meadow and we take a very long ramble. The dogs romp, happily. By the time we are heading home, snowflakes begin falling on our heads, and now I’m growing colder. Pleasantly, I walk home, and the flakes fall heavier and heavier into the dark afternoon, becoming evening. There is no wind yet. The dead leaves turn white. We walk home to a warm fire, it’s setting the living room ablaze. The Thanksgiving weekend is ending in a change of the landscape and the promise of inches for skiing in the morning. Traffic and schedules disrupted. I am happily exhausted. Frank leaves the spotlight on. The snow falls in huge flakes straight down from the sky, layering the field, melting on the unfrozen river. This snow is think and inevitable. December is here. Thirty two years ago, I was having contractions in a Florida hospital, heading into the storm of this first birth, the long long night of it ahead. The working and waiting. The snow is here, it cannot be stopped. In the morning, that Florida morning, he finally came into the world, after one hell of a long night. Forceps. Jesus. It was quite a night. And the best and happiest of the joyful morning still ahead.