The First Snow...

Mind you, it is just a dusting of snow but so reminenscent of the season, like many seasons before. 

Growing up with 5 other siblings there was never a dull moment in the house.  Winter would get bad, everybody stuck inside, that is, until the snowfall.  Back then it seemed to me that when it snowed, it snowed tons and tons, and we couldn't get dressed fast enough to get out the door! With hardwood floors my mother would dread that mess when we came back in. 

We would stay out roaming the landscape for the best ride, which was in an adjoining house "addition called Eastwood."  There was the biggest steep hill, actually they were a pair, with no traffic except for the people who lived there, which wasn't many, and every kid in the neighborhood would drag out their scoops and sleighs ready for locomotion!

The hills were perfect and there was plenty of landing space, and lots of room for other kids; if you didn't ride the paved road, you could ride either hill as and there were absolutely no fences anywhere!  What made it worthwhile was having the coolest ride.  Our neighbor "Crick" was a truck driver, and he gave us kids a couple of big tire innertubes to sleigh with, and man those things would fly!  We would stay outside until we got soppy wet and on the verge of frostbite too! run back home and change, stand over our big floor furance, and after a while slip back into some dry clothes and back out we'd go!  Ah, the joys of winter wonderland!

I was always fascinated by snow and icicles.  Snow falling to me was one of the most beautiful and purest of sights, how it landscapes everything; how every snowflake is supposed to have its own unique shape.  I love its undisturbed state.  We had plenty of birds, red Cardinals, that stood out against the white, and animal tracks would emerge as we lived near a wooded area.  Funny I don't remember too many ice storms growing up, but I loved how the icicles formed on cliffs and houses, and I always have this winter memory of being fascinated with the ice patterns on the schoolbus windows that looked like ferns, such an intricate pattern; I always thought so wonderfully odd.  Of course we were told never to eat icicles or go to the creek and get out on the ice, or swing from that grapevine cliff, but we did anyway! and we ate plenty of snow cream, too!

Anyway, I can't believe its afternoon already! Where did the day go?!