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Moments to Remind
Dec. 22nd, 2008 09:14 pmOn Saturday, I moved out of college and back home. I had been planning on doing so on Friday, but there was this large snow storm, and I am still not used to my massive rear-wheel-drive ex-cop-car and did not elect to go back in the Snow.
The air itself glimmered. It was all full of flat little snowflakes, and although directly above me there were clouds, the sun was bright and shining on an angle. As the snow fell, it caught and reflected the sun, and so the air was all full of little flashes of light. It glinted.
Yesterday, MW and JJ and I hopped in the car and started going South. As we drove, we passed through the parts of the road that were covered in the soft, whispery kind of snow that seems to be like fire made of ice. Once we left Michigan and got to Ohio, the winds came whipping off the planes and curled around us long enough to say hello before flying off again.
Further south in Ohio they had not gotten our deep and painful snowfall. They had gotten freezing rain. The road was not icy, though. The trees were. All of them, covered in a layer of ice that looked silver in the bright sunlight. The ice, had we gotten out to walk on it, would have made grass like crystal needles crunch underfoot; and the air should have tinkled like little silver bells, instead of howling as it actually did.
I'm being literary.
So today, we got all the way from just south of Knoxville, Tennessee to Gainsville, Florida. Kentucky, Tennessee, and the first half of Georgia involve us driving through the Appalachian mountain chain. And I do mean through: entire mountains have been dynamited in half to make room for the interstate. There, indecently exposed for all to see, are the bones of the land. It is rock - laid down millions of years ago, layer after layer, and thrust up and worn down into the old, placid mountains they are today. Clinging to the rock were stalactites of ice, cascades and waterfalls, muddy with the sediment and frozen in time.
I remember, as a very young child making this same trip, looking up in wonder not at the forces which cut away the mountains, but the ones which put them there in the first place, stacked all those sheets of rock one upon the other.
Tonight, the sum set. It does that every night. It's nothing special, any more than the sun coming up every morning is.
I know that nature is just this vast uncaring chaos that not only feels no malice towards me, but has not even noticed. And yet . . .
The air itself glimmered. It was all full of flat little snowflakes, and although directly above me there were clouds, the sun was bright and shining on an angle. As the snow fell, it caught and reflected the sun, and so the air was all full of little flashes of light. It glinted.
Yesterday, MW and JJ and I hopped in the car and started going South. As we drove, we passed through the parts of the road that were covered in the soft, whispery kind of snow that seems to be like fire made of ice. Once we left Michigan and got to Ohio, the winds came whipping off the planes and curled around us long enough to say hello before flying off again.
Further south in Ohio they had not gotten our deep and painful snowfall. They had gotten freezing rain. The road was not icy, though. The trees were. All of them, covered in a layer of ice that looked silver in the bright sunlight. The ice, had we gotten out to walk on it, would have made grass like crystal needles crunch underfoot; and the air should have tinkled like little silver bells, instead of howling as it actually did.
I'm being literary.
So today, we got all the way from just south of Knoxville, Tennessee to Gainsville, Florida. Kentucky, Tennessee, and the first half of Georgia involve us driving through the Appalachian mountain chain. And I do mean through: entire mountains have been dynamited in half to make room for the interstate. There, indecently exposed for all to see, are the bones of the land. It is rock - laid down millions of years ago, layer after layer, and thrust up and worn down into the old, placid mountains they are today. Clinging to the rock were stalactites of ice, cascades and waterfalls, muddy with the sediment and frozen in time.
I remember, as a very young child making this same trip, looking up in wonder not at the forces which cut away the mountains, but the ones which put them there in the first place, stacked all those sheets of rock one upon the other.
Tonight, the sum set. It does that every night. It's nothing special, any more than the sun coming up every morning is.
I know that nature is just this vast uncaring chaos that not only feels no malice towards me, but has not even noticed. And yet . . .
