I Used To Live In A Snow Hut And It Was A Precious, Frigid Gift

Image by snow-loving author

[Warning: If you live in an area that gets excessive amounts of snow, and you’re beyond sick of the stuff, this post might cause harm to your certainty that snow should be exterminated.]

I remember back to the days when I used to live in a snow hut.

It was more of a cave—three snow walls, a frozen ceiling, and the great gaping mouth. The mouth is where my siblings and I would crouch through to gain access to our home, which sat in the yard of our parents’ home. We had two houses, actually—one in our parents’ yard, the other near our grandparents’ back patio, nearer the frozen lake. The snow would get deepest there. A snow hut needs depth; otherwise, there are only snow people or snow angels. No huts, no shelter from the elements, no squishing together inside our architectural feat.

Frankly, that was our only architectural feat. None of us took up that career path.

Now, you might not have seen our hut as true real estate, but we did. I’ll grant you that none of us had jobs back then, so I can guess the question you are about to pose: How did you pay for a hut? And, if we couldn’t pay for a hut, how did we acquire one?

Blood, sweat, and tears, that’s how.

If you aren’t trust fund kids—we weren’t--your back-up plan is hands. We used them to dig, pull, and tunnel through four, five feet of snow. It was exhausting. Today, it would trash my sixty-year-old arthritic hands, but a child will plow through—literally—and snow from a run-of-the-mill Pennsylvania winter storm slowly turns into a beautiful house in which you can stand upright, and which could be featured in Snow Hut Architectural Digest.

Sadly, those days are long gone. Today, I write this in northern Virginia in the dining area of my favorite grocery store, in a leather chair in front of a wall of windows that look out onto the commercial real estate here. I’m engrossed in my writing until, suddenly, something catches my eye. I look up.

SNOW!

What?? But then I remember, yes, we had a 50% chance of snow, which for us is as high as it gets these days. Imagine that. I’m writing about the snow huts from days of yore, and the sky opens to remind me of what it was like back then.

As soon as I gasp at the high drama outside, others in the dining area discover, too. Customers and staff leave their tables to crowd around the windows. People can’t believe it: snow. It’s an event here, something you write about (ahem), something you write home about, and that might be true. A woman with a British accent chatted with me briefly about the beauty outside. She was as thrilled as I was. Maybe she will write home. And, dear family, not only that, but we got snow!

I don’t write too fast. It takes me some time, so by the time I plunk down these words, the snow has already collected in places, as if it decided to be legitimate, not an idea lacking execution. The reason this event is so exciting is that it’s become so rare here. In a warming climate, snow huts this far south will not be part of the life story of the children raised here. Those memories are for the fortunate older. My sons are in their mid-twenties, and even they had some snow dumps to look back on--one called Snowmageddon, in fact, which did support the carving of a lower-ceilinged hut for their very first house. It gave me endless joy. I still think about it today.

Oh, dear. Now look. In the span of three paragraphs, the big snow squall has died. Ah, well. It was cherished while it lasted. And I think that’s the point. Nothing lasts, including a few feet of snow, should you be so lucky. The trick is to enjoy things while they’re here. I say that a lot lately, probably because I didn’t use to enjoy things as much as I could have. I think the passing of enough time is what leads you to realize this truth, or maybe a devastating loss. I don’t know if it’s true wisdom as much as a coping mechanism for the finality of all things, though aren’t those the same thing? Learning to cope is wise.

I had my first foray into facing my mortality this past weekend. It was a death awareness workshop presented by a well-known death doula, Alua Arthur. I had no idea this type of workshop existed. I happened upon it through a coaching class I’m taking. I’m still processing the weekend and will write about it in time, but from where I stand today, this moment right here, whether snow-filled or sun-drenched, is a matter-of-fact gift.

Take, for example, what I know about this particular moment. Right now, there is increasing potential for a significant snowstorm this weekend. I know, I know. These potentials often don’t pan out; however, the numbers are growing, so it’s promising.

I sit here, aware that the future could put forth an extraordinary moment for my snow-loving self. Yet, after getting a peek into what my last breath could be like, I now see this moment, this snowless moment, this sunny and eventless moment, for what it is: precious. It’s a moment like any other. Existence is a continuum of ups, downs, and judgment calls about the quality of the moment. However, if you really think about it, those calls are faulty. Just to be alive is a gift, and to have been alive was a gift, and to have ever seen snow, a gift; or to have never seen it, a gift still.

The way I experience this insight is as if I’m seeing the base value of my time here. The details of my life get piled on top, but the time itself is the great wonder. The fact that I’m here and experiencing life is the extraordinary thing. The snow is exciting, the sun is cheerful, the things I need to do today are learning opportunities, the hardships teach, the parsing of these words is a stroke of luck for my brain and my greater awareness. What kind of crazy luck is it to have had any of it?

Instead of being disappointed with what didn’t happen—namely, snow—I can be grateful for what did. I can notice the excitement of the other shoppers who gathered in front of the grocery store windows, excited, chatty, telling jokes, gasping at the spectacle outside. I can watch the brief flurry of flakes and have fun with it. One day, if we don’t get much in the way of flurries anymore, I can be happy with my memories of them, when I carved architecture into great drifts of them, when my kids did the same, and when the sight of snowflakes was a thing of awe as one of the features of this earth.

The thing is, if there are no more flakes to awe me, there will be something else to do it instead.

That, right there, is a good life.

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Happy Winter, friends.