2001-05-24 - 22:16 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Changing Scene

I have friends who see me as I am, and like me in spite of it -- as I in turn like them. We seem, unless I am mistaken, willing to agree to disagree without smoke or flaring flames. Friends who seek to understand how the other person feels. Friends who communicate without bile and snide remarks on the side. They are my net family and I am one of theirs.

Today in passing I saw a remark of how pretty the snow can be in the winter in Michigan or Wisconsin.

Like other possessions of mine, my memories are somewhat scattered. One early memory is of Peggy our pet dog, a Wire Haired Fox Terrier. She would get all anxious and antsy when there was fresh snow on the ground and beg to be let out. Once out she would go lickety split, nose to the ground raising a long mound of snow like a mole does earth. After while she would come to the door, shake off the snow and all wet, scratch to come in. Then she was a very hungry dog indeed. Those snows were pretty.

Dad was a city guy and we didn't go much of anywhere in the winter time except to see friends and relatives. I went ice skating on a near by city lake and sledding a bit, but the snow was dirty and grimy in town.

The next experience I had with Boreas and kin was when as a teen age kid I was taken to a cabin of a friend of the family which was up in the mountains. It had a big window, later they were called picture windows, I don't know what they were called when he built the cabin. It looked out on nice mountain scenery, pine trees, rocks, green undergrowth -- a pretty sight. We watched twilight come in after the sunset and spent a comfortable and warm night. In the morning when I woke up I could tell the outside light was different. I slipped into some clothes and got my cold feet off the icy floor into shoes and went to the picture window. I looked out on a scene fit to be on the nicest Christmas card one can imagine, all that beautiful scenery plus big beautiful snow flakes softly drifting down on ground which already was wearing its blanket of white. Finally our friend asked me for help with breakfast and that enchanted spell was broken as my attention was turned to matters of survival. Even so, as I passed back and forth it was with my eyes turned to the blanket of white and falling flakes clinging to the evergreen branches. Some how I am still that teenager beginning to appreciate beauty with dumb inexpressible wonder.

As I told in an earlier entry about coming home to Heather after a second shift tour, walking through an untrammeled kingdom of soft white seeing things that were ugly when not wrapped and muffled in natures silent, life giving white, frozen water. The sound of the last street car's wheels squealing on the curve past our house. I gently woke my bride of not many months and urged her to get dressed, bundle up and come walk with me. With a curious look, she spoiled me and dressed without question. I said something like, "Come walk with me in the pretty, the wonderful and the magical." With that we stepped into a world whose only real light was from the white snow. An occasional arc light would shine a yellow circle on the snowy street, the houses were all dark and it was just Heather and I out there to appreciate the beauty. We walked a couple of blocks to a small park and wandered the untrodden paths, occasionally twitching a twig and watching the snow shower down from the attached branch. She still joins me in that memory now and then.

Heather's brother used to take us up in the mountains to a lake, dammed by man and the ice cleared by the city. Skating on that sharply frozen ice while admiring the surrounding snow clad mountains and breathing air cold enough to burn the nostrils and smelling of pine was something that would have to be experienced to be appreciated.

When I got skiis he took us to one of the first recreational ski areas in our state to ski. Most of my tumbles occurred because of inattention. I was trying to learn to ski while gawking at the beauty of our wintry mountains.

Many years passed -- well, maybe ten or so. I was working out east away from town -- in a factory, on second shift. After work most of the employees went South and a bit West. My course would be almost due West, and after a fresh night time snow, I would break trail west toward home. It was I guess a function of my headlights on the new snow that caused the beautiful sight. Off West were the town lights reflected from the bottom of the clouds and ahead of me the perfectly level expanse of unbroken snow. As I drove it was as if I were moving through a broad expanse of sparkling diamonds, winking and blinking as I drove on. All too soon I would come to the artery and slosh a mile on to our house. But for a while time ceased to exist for me and I wallowed in that sight.

The last time I enjoyed snowy scenery was going from Denver on the Amtrak Pioneer to Portland, Oregon while a fairly heavy snow covered the ground. Through the Southern part of Wyoming it was a pretty flat country with bluffs and ridges off in the distance. Occasionally we would pass the weathered old loading chutes along side the tracks, along with the corrals and holding pens once used during the cowboy -- stock raising and shipping days. Made me wish I was an artist with a pad and charcoal or pen and ink and knowing the technique needed to put it on paper. At times the movement of the train combined with the action of the wind seemed to put us in a world of absolute white. Almost had the feeling of being in some kind of spaceship breaking through the draperies of time. We paralelled the Columbia River enjoying the hilly scenery on the South side of the train, the grim hills of almost black rock, at least it looked black to me -- maybe it was just moisture on its surface -- coated here and there on its more gentle surfaces with snow.

In other times I observed many different kinds of beauty which are also pictures hanging on the walls of my memory. But for now those snowy memories are symbols of the Changing Scene . . . . . . . .

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