Winter Sets In

Daytonians have a strange relationship with the weather: a particularly bizarre sort of voodoo religious approach to it. This is especially evident when they're waiting for the first snow of the year.

Personally, I love snow, and not just because it allows me a little narcisstic smirk every time someone talks about it.

I love the way, when the snow is falling, that it shrinks the world down to your immediate surroundings, everything else dissolving into a grayish haze. It makes the immediate world so much more distinct. I love how it it falls silently and muffles all sounds, turning even the most crowded venue into an island of solitude. I love how falling snow, at night, catches the glow of the streetlights and gives visible shape to the shifting of the air.

I love the look of it, covering everything, for creating, simultaneously, sharp distinctions and hazy bluish shadows. The ground vanishes in smooth white curves, but anything ambitious enough to strike upwards--trees, lampposts, buildings--gains the vividness of extreme contrast.

I love it even when I'm cleaning it off my car, the feel of the heavy mass of light flakes. I think this aspect of snow is best enjoyed when I'm wearing gloves, however.