Enjoy this excerpt from a personal essay, a memoir/travel piece. Thank you for reading.
It’s the blizzard of 1985 and I’m an adventurous and easily excited kid, fifteen years old. I’m standing on East Hedding Place, the halfway point between flights of what this town calls the “golden stairs”; they lead to other levels, other tiny neighborhoods, of my hometown of Mount Tabor, New Jersey. Snow swirls around me like a white dust storm, but the view from where I stand is breathtaking. Snow covers the trees, weighing down even large branches. As the wind kicks up it ruffles the limbs and sprays snow everywhere, numbing my exposed cheeks which feel puffy from the cold. The nearby globelike conifers are outlined in white, and nearby houses are also caked with snow, their windows like smoked glass. Snow is still falling, thick and fast. It’s all like an artist’s enchanted stage set, waiting to be admired and applauded. In my case—on this evening—my satisfied heart is my applause, silent, but grateful for this surprising and splendid gift.
I had snuck out of my house at close to midnight, long after the eleven o’clock curfew set by my sleeping parents. The snow crunched under my boots and rose up over my shins, but once I got moving I hardly felt the cold through my layers of clothing and scarf and cap and gloves. I was on my way to my friend’s house; he was waiting for me there, but I took my time, savoring every sight, every moment, glancing back to watch my path disappear behind me. Now I stand between the multi-tiered stairways, torn between taking the short way and the long way, but also content for the moment to be alone, no one else in sight: I have the snow, the night, the town all to myself. If I went up the staircase to my left I felt that I could climb right on up into the sky. If I took the staircase to my right I would wade into the snow at the bottom. I head for the down stairway. The banisters and side panels of the stairs are made of ordinary iron piping fitted together—now every straightaway and elbow is coated in white, traced in thickening snow, making the shape stand out, revealing the patterns in eye-pleasing form and detail. As I move slowly down the stairs I open my mouth and let the icy flakes pepper my tongue like frozen bb’s; they have a delicate taste and this welcomed drink from nature quenches my thirst—my thirst to be more fully and completely a part of the scene.
For some reason not a soul has been drawn out of their homes and into this cold winter night. Many are probably watching television or resting snuggly in their beds, but they’re all missing the show: an event of dazzling magnificence, a time when they should be forcing themselves, and all others in their presence, outside to live an experience, one that costs not a penny.
This essay of the experience you had late at night in a snowstorm is peppered with literary similes and adjectives that great writing seems to require. The need to emphasize the common experience that I experienced during my young life in Wisconsin where snowstorms were more common.
When I think back on experiences like that, when I was 17, I recall leaving the Catholic Church bowling alley to walk the half-mile home in 20 below zero, when I looked up in the sky was exploding in color of aurora borealis streaming from the Zenith like I'd never seen before. I called my friend to tell him about it, and he told me he had been photographing the scene for two hours already.
Thank you for posting this wonderful slice of winter wonderland. Brought back many memories.
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