When I went into the blizzard sweeping the East Coast the second day of Spring, I was surprised to find so many people hanging out or happily at work on all sorts of creations…

…including a rough, beautiful snow fort…

By rolling a rectangle of snow over and over on itself, the builders created squarish bundles of snow with the echoes of a spiral in the interior…

…they were the “blocks” for the fort…

 

…one made, and put in place, after another…

I remember spending hours building forts and igloos. Once they were finished, they were incredibly restful to hang out in (snow is quiet, and keeps you warm)…

As I wandered through the field, I saw many snow people…some big, built by that snow-rolling method that incorporates some earth… branches turned to expressions of JOY…

…some were tiny, like this snow lady…

…Some seemed to be made in relation to another…

The best: seeing a man intently working on his massive snow sculpture…

 

People seemed so content in the snow today, as though all cares were gone.

Though it was most likely the last snow of the long winter, it reminded me of Mary Oliver’s poem First Snow…

 

The snow

began here

this morning and all day

continued, its white

rhetoric everywhere

calling us back to why, how,

whence, such beauty and what

the meaning; such

an oracular fever! flowing

past windows, an energy it seemed

would never ebb, never settle

less than lovely! and only now

deep into night,

it has finally ended.

The silence

is immense,

and the heavens still hold

a million candles; nowhere

the familiar things:

the stars, the moon,

the darkness we expect

and nightly turn from. Trees

glitter like castles

of ribbons, the broad fields

smolder with light, a passing

creekbed lies

heaped with shining hills;

and though the questions

that have assailed us all day

remain–not a single

answer has been found–

walking out now

into the silence and the light

under the trees,

and through the fields,

feels like one.