DC is in the middle of its third winter weather “event” in as many weeks. In some ways, we’ve been lucky so far; the major storms that have hit the East Coast have missed us. In other ways, we really haven’t been lucky since what we’ve been getting has been just enough to need to be dealt with but not enough to either have fun in or to really justify closing anything.
This morning I spent 45 minutes shovelmopping the sidewalks I’m responsible for in my neighborhood. It was like shoveling a puddle with a thin skin of ice on top. To make matters even less satisfactory, it started to sleet while I was bent over the shovel trying to scrape half frozen water off uneven concrete. But then I noticed something.
My mother’s across the street neighbors have two old pine trees in their side yard. These aren’t squat, fat, Christmas tree looking evergreens; they’re the straight, tall, thin-needle variety. Once I stopped scraping the plastic blade of my snow shovel across the concrete to try to get under the slush I could hear the sleet hissing through the pine trees’ needles.
Even though I could still hear the din of traffic on the two nearby cross-town routes, that hiss sounded like peace for a minute, like nature subtly making itself known. In a world that largely doesn’t seem to pay attention unless nature does the equivalent of set her hair on fire and run through the family bar-b-que naked, this was a nice reminder to be mindful and to pause.
So while I’d rather have actual snow to shovel, having to shovel a puddle turned out to not be all bad.
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