What you can’t see in this photo is the feathery blobs of snow that were falling when I stepped out the back door to snap this photo of my neighbor’s pine trees. They fell…lazily? Certainly they were not hurtling down from the clouds, shoved by a cold wind. No. They were light, drifting down as if gravity didn’t matter very much. There’s no wind. The temperature is just below freezing so the snow on the ground is wet and heavy, perfect for packing into snowballs or snowmen. But in the air, this snow is unhurried, fluffy, and fresh.

I always marvel at the first real snowfall of winter, how it changes the light coming into the house, how it adds a frosty filigree to the trees and covers up the shambles that is my autumn garden.

A quick online search answers my question about the many Eskimo words for snow. The anthropologist Franz Boas reported in 1911 that Inuit speakers have dozens, maybe hundreds of words for snow. This sparked debate but it is now known that all the Arctic peoples (Yupik, Sami, and others) have many words to describe snow and ice based on attention to conditions. Their language reflects a close relationship with their environment that we English speakers do not have. We only have “snow”. It could be argued that we have a few more: graupel (which is actually German) describes soft pellets that form when supercooled water droplets form on snowflakes so that they take on the consistency of styrofoam; corn snow which is the coarse grainy stuff that forms in the snowpack when there is repeated warming and refreezing; powder, which is dry and fine and light. But rather than many words for the snow itself, we have adjectives such as wet, heavy, fluffy, dry.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I’ve had the thought that I’d like to compile a list of words for rain: drizzle, downpour, cloudburst, virga…maybe someday. English feels like a blunt instrument sometimes, but that’s no reason to give up.

In the meantime, as I’ve been writing this, the snow has slackened. A few flakes continue to drift down and I’m watching clumps fall from tree boughs while slabs slide from metal roofs. Perhaps the air is warming. Perhaps the snow will turn to rain. I’ve had my daily dose of magic, sitting in my warm house while the first significant snow fell. Inside of me lives a little kid who will always marvel at falling snow, even when there is also an adult who will be tired of it in a couple months. I may tell myself that I don’t like winter, but it’s not true. That little kid refuses to give up on me.

It’s also that little kid who won’t let me give up on writing. I stopped the blog for awhile, a couple years really. I was doing Other Things and wouldn’t make the time, except for daily journaling. But writing for readers? What is there to say? Sometimes a fallow period is required. I call it creative composting–taking the scraps of life and letting them cook and ferment together. Live, observe, reflect. When it’s time, the words and images will come. I always worry during a fallow period. I should be trying harder, I should be doing more, what if the words are gone for good? Worry doesn’t help. It’s just noise. The difficulty is in sitting down, making the commitment. The ideas themselves are transient. Words are transient. They come like snowflakes and melt if conditions aren’t right. I don’t believe they are meant to stay. As soon as they land, they begin to transform and bind with other snowflakes to create an entire snowpack. The snowpack is always in transition too and eventually transforms into water which cycles back through the atmosphere. It may be the same with stories, narratives, descriptions, metaphors and similes. they come together as thoughts, then words, then stories and transform as soon as they land on the eye or ear. As a kid, I learned to read quickly and loved stories. I was always making up stories and drawing pictures. Even now, reading is one of my great delights and I respond to supple language and well-constructed sentences. My imagination needs the exercise.

So I circle back to writing. This blog has value to me as a writer and thinker, and I hope that the latest drought is ending. No promises, but I want to see if I can get myself in the writing chair more often.

The snow has stopped. I hear ravens in the trees and tires rolling through the slush.