Me and Snow

I never saw any snow until I was seven years old. We'd moved from the low country of Georgia to Atlanta at the beginning of my second year of grammar school. Soon after we arrived at the house my parents rented (not far from downtown Decatur) I saw my first hard frost. At first I thought it was snow. I asked my mom if it was snow and she explained what frost was. It was still a new and exciting thing for me to see.

A couple of weeks later it really did snow. When I was a kid the Atlanta area would get at least one or two heavy snowfalls each winter. To this day, my favorite sound in all the world is that of fresh snow crunching underfoot. But it doesn't snow very often these days in Atlanta. (You folk who discount global warming go fuck yourselves.) Now if so much as an errant snowflake finds itself in the Atlanta area it makes the national news.

From our X-mas tree hunt this year. That's Peach Orchard Mountain in the distance, where our property is located.

But when I was a kid every winter would bring snow. Enough so that my parents bought me a sled. I used that sled so much that I broke it and they had to buy me a new one. By the time I had completed the sixth grade my parents uprooted us again and we headed south to Macon and I never saw snowfall again until I was in high school and we were living in the north Georgia mountains.

When Carole and I retire, we're hoping to build a house on the property her dad left her in the mountains of North Carolina just south of the Virginia border. The land sits at 4,000 feet above sea level and that entire part of the state gets quite a lot of snow each winter. I want to live where there is actually a winter season. I enjoy seeing snow. I never got tired of playing in it. One of these days, I would like to think that I'll live in a spot where I can look forward to experiencing a real winter again.

Hopefully, Carole and I will have our cabin on the mountain behind me.

As I write this (01-01-2010), the forecast for much the North Carolina mountains calls for snow eight out of the next nine days. I can't recall the last time that happened here in the state. And, of course, I'm stuck working here in Charlotte for the duration.