The pines stood on the ridge like sentinels guarding the Valley of Love and Delight. We sat in our meeting room, windows facing west, and watched the trees disappear into a cloudy white mass which could have been fog. Within minutes, we found out it was snow. Serendipitously, we had just finished our agenda while simultaneously reaching our appointed ending time. My fellow retreatants broke for the door to start their journeys home. I broke for my car to retrieve my running gear.
Across the street, on land once flooded to provide hydro power for an electric dynamo, tall pines and hemlocks overhung intertwined paths. Last month’s purchase of trail shoes was proving prescient. The first quarter mile being on paved road, there were no trees to give shelter, and my glasses a coating of precipitation. Entering the woods, the world was reduced to the area immediately surrounding me. Flake fell in gossamer sheets with a lulling hush.
As I ran, trees bent in to a cathedral arch above my head. Brush swept my legs with icy fingers. Somewhere a donkey brayed its objection to the snomaggedon. The long-breached stone dam was yet bare, and the swift creek continued it’s rush. Their defiance certainly can’t last under the assault of this “weather event.” Prudence dictated that I too surrender to the reality of roads that were growing more slippery by the moment. Leaving the forest’s confines, I was warm with the knowledge that this latest storm, not yet two hours old, had already yielded a memory worth holding on to.