Why do we wish for snow?

It gets forecast, and usually in my neighborhood is a big disappointment. It either never falls, or just melts when it hits after a 50 degree yesterday. Or it's mainly rain. Or it's on top of frozen rain. Or it comes when it hasn't been forecast here at all. Or it continues when it was supposed to stop hours ago.

So I figure snow is the trickiest forecast for this area. We're tucked in a valley in the mountains, the Swannanoa River Valley, with the Blue Ridge Parkway sliding through it and going towards the Smoky Mountains.

Because of our litigious society, schools close if it's forecast, because the kids are waiting for busses which can't get up (or down) our curving mountain roads if they are iced over (the roads, not the kids or busses.) And our highway departments do get out there and sift sand and salt onto all the roads...especially the Interstate and the US highways. The state highways come next, and roads in towns, and finally those curvy mountain slope roads.  (With property now being developed on the tops of mountains, the least settled, there are amazing roads up slopes now.)

Thus for 2 days at a time, when it's unexpectedly sunny and dry, after a wintry forecast, with completely clear roads, kids have to be cared for at home. I happens often, with the result that extra days (snow days) have to be added to the school calendar after the normal last day of school.

OK, enough of knowing the social background.

I like snow because it photographs well. There's a startling light that comes off the white surfaces against those dull grey trees that are everywhere in mountains. Snow is also nice to just look at out my windows, on the times I can't actually get out of my apartment.  It shows different facets throughout the hours.

Saturday morning the sun would play peak-a-boo with clouds dropping more flakes, and gusts of wind that tossed the snow from roof edges and branches into swirls. What a movie!

My emotions are running from the peacefulness of everything being coated in snow, the sounds muted, to my joy at seeing how wind actually acts through the trees going hither and there.  When the view out the window changes so much, it's quite entertaining to this observer.

I'm grateful for my wonderful heating system, so that I can sit and play on a laptop (thankful also for electricity to run both of those gadgets) and record my thoughts, as well as see what others have to say.

But it does have a limit to my patience, which is when "cabin-fever" sets in.  How many hours? Not just within one day. Probably if I were to have to spend more than 2 days inside I'd meet my limit. And I probably would bundle up and venture out within the first 8 hours anyway, if it weren't a blizzard.

Thankfully it wasn't that bad. And our "dusting" looked like it didn't ice most of the sidewalks, just a bit still on my wood deck and steps. Cars were buried under quite a bit, and I might have ventured to melt some of it from the defrosting system at some point. I was planning to go to the studio in town if possible.  By the time you read this, I will have done most of this...so these past-tense verbs are written for your reading tomorrow. I'll edit so that they either are correct or changed to reflect the truth.