Snow
– captivating, crucial… and cold
I sat at my computer yesterday ruminating about endangered
species and the like. I even wrote a column about it, but I just
couldn’t hit the
”
go
”
button on the thing.
It’s Christmas, for crying out loud. I sat there, paralyzed by
my own lack of ideas, when one of our daughters strolled in. It’s
her habit to drop by the office.
Snow – captivating, crucial… and cold
I sat at my computer yesterday ruminating about endangered species and the like. I even wrote a column about it, but I just couldn’t hit the “go” button on the thing.
It’s Christmas, for crying out loud. I sat there, paralyzed by my own lack of ideas, when one of our daughters strolled in. It’s her habit to drop by the office.
“Why don’t you do a column about snow?” she suggested.
Snow? It’s wet, cold and white, what’s to write about? But out of the mouths of innocents ideas are often born.
Snow is not as unusual in our region as our balmy climate might suggest.
One co-worker mentioned that her husband was hunting pigeon in the Santa Lucia range this week, only days after the Monterey County mountains were dusted with snow.
Snow is a rare event within our towns. I only recall a serious blanket of the white stuff in Hollister once in my life, and we made the most of that 5-inch coating, tossing soggy snowballs around before piling into the station wagon for a trip into the hills, where snow was deeper and there was more fun to be had.
Snow is an annual occurrence in the mountains surrounding our communities. And when it appears, people will pile into cars and head up to Mount Hamilton, Fremont Peak and other high points. One year, we took our kids into the Diablo Range via Lone Tree Road near Hollister. We encountered a beer-fueled celebration-and-snow fight among a group of high school kids and quickly decided to make our fun elsewhere.
I prefer to enjoy my snow from a distance, anyway. I have an aversion to wet and cold. Looking at greening hillsides topped in snow lends our landscape a genuine wintry air. My favorite memory is of a day sail on Monterey Bay. It was calm, and the wind was scarcely enough to be felt. As we ghosted along in sweaters, we could look around us at the mountains ringing the bay. All were blanketed.
Most of the snow we receive does not stick long enough to be noticed. A few Christmases ago, two of us were shivering through the Pinnacles area Christmas Bird Count. We were charged with counting every feathered thing that appeared along La Gloria Road.
The weather grew steadily worse through the day. The birds, exhibiting the good sense we apparently lack, had found snug spots deep within the cover, and were neither flying nor calling. When the rain softened and a few flakes began to fly, we made a quick decision: cocoa time.
The next year, well into springtime, I accompanied a Four-H group to Fremont Peak. The wind howled with a fury that threatened to topple some of the smaller kids. Next thing, snow. In March. In San Benito County.
Snow is more than just another pretty face on the landscape. It hides and shelters small animals where it lies deep through the winter. It tells hikers’ stories in the tracks that are so well preserved on its surface.
Most important to all of us in California, it is a savings account of our most vital commodity: water.
While some rain soaks into the earth, much of it quickly runs off to flow to the sea. But the ocean of snow locked into the Sierra vastness melts over weeks in the spring, to be captured in a network of reservoirs that sustain the greatest agricultural monolith ever known.
Thanks to snow, California can feed much of the world.
A column about snow? Not such a bad idea after all. Thanks, Maura.
