I rarely take a hiatus from posting. Sometimes my travels take me blessedly away from being connected, but in this case it was the usual year-end trifecta of Christmas, New Year's, and bronchitis. Last year, Kona. This year, herbal tea. And then we got snow.
Winter in Portland is usually a crappy week in January. It gets cold, it gets icy, and we get all sullen and withdrawn, not that anyone really notices. It's usually pretty gray and grim around here, which we really don't mind all that much, either. When we get foggy mornings, all the better; it makes for great photography. But that bone-chilling cold kills the heart and dulls the mind, and at this point mine can only take so much more dulling. And then we get snow.
I have a long relationship with snow. I grew up in it. I went to high school and college in Wyoming, and worked for several years in Colorado. It was a regular and predictable part of my life between the months of October and April, so its increasingly rare appearances in Portland are something I rather enjoy. I learned how to drive in the stuff from my early teens, so now I gloat with a smug superiority when I navigate my Subaru through it like a Swede. No, I'm not proud of that. But hey.
Photographically, it's a delight, and to be perfectly honest, I wish we got more. Everything changes with snow: light and shadow, landscapes and textures, moods and humor. As much as I enjoy tramping around in the rain with my camera, even more so in the snow, but our opportunities seem to decline with each passing winter.
I have no fine moral note to finesse here, just these simple observations. The snow I speak of has long since melted into memory, and the rains are due back any day now. Our lives will shift back into normal; we will return to our regularly scheduled program. But what the hell.
Pitchers and catchers will report to spring training in a month.
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