SNOW
A Weather Report...
I often tell people - in what feels like a dismal, lugubrious way - that “it doesn’t snow the way it used to.” And I think I’m correct, but what good does that do for me or anybody else? Do I need to say this? Am I the sole, living custodian of weather past? Who cares what I think about the weather? Perhaps I have resigned myself to climate change, at the great and the personal level. If I had kids, I might worry more.
New York City and the Tri-State Area truly don’t get snow the way they did when I was a kid and not even the way they did 10 years ago. I remember big snow. When I was a child, they would dress me up in a snow suit - sort of a full-on, padded boiler suit. They stuck my feet into galoshes, wrapped my neck in a scarf, put on mittens and a hat, and then sent me out. I could do little in so much padding, but it was wondrous. There were paths shoveled through the snow that came up to my chest. The snow was clean and white and stayed on the ground. It was an alternate universe that happened every year.
I would run and jump in the snow, making holes in it, throw snow balls and stay out until I turned numb. Then, I would run from the last snow fort that my friend Roland and I had built and come inside to warm up and eat. It took a while to take off all those clothes.
Big snow meant a possible snow day, when the school system in Yonkers would announce over the radio that schools were closed for the day. I sat on a stool, fully dressed with my jacket and my school bag, waiting by the front door. The second they made the announcement, I’d rush outside to play. They used to buy me boots that were a little large so I could grow into them and I remember slipping and sloshing around in these oversized boots while I ran into our dead-end street to celebrate no school for the day. It was almost pagan.
This whole time - the first ten years of my life - I was becoming a student of snow and how it behaved. The difference between powder and compressed snow, what it felt and sounded like to have your boot crunch into snow and leave a track. Snow that formed a hard sheet of ice on top. Bird and squirrel tracks in the backyard, revealing a secret universe, normally hidden. And the inevitable melting - the downfall - of snow into slush. Nobody ever liked slush.
We had a couple of sleds from when my brother was young - 9 years earlier - and I would try to sled down the hill we lived on, but the conditions rarely favored it. Instead, we had to walk around and find other hills, notably one in the middle of a small park in the town of Tuckahoe. Roland and his sister had a flying saucer sled and, even better, a sort of triangle-shaped rocket of a snow sled. Those suckers flew down the hill. My sleds were Flexible Fliers and looked just like “Rosebud,” from “Citizen Kane.” Those were happy days.
We lived at the top of the hill and my mom, who had once skidded for a whole block down one of the nearby side hills, hated driving in the snow. My dad bought big, gnarly snow tires, two of them, and mounted them to some steel wheels. These sat in the garage all year, until the first snow fell, when he would drag them out and put them on the rear of our black Oldsmobile. Life slowed down in a big storm at the top of that hill. Canned soup, sandwiches, TV and books, along with profound quiet, until it was over. I would stare out the window at the heavy, white branches of the pin oak in the backyard.
When I went away to college, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I discovered the heated tunnels beneath many of the buildings. You could avoid snow if you wanted to, if you were willing to stay within a small orbit. I preferred to venture forth, and took some magical walks around town. I once walked across the frozen Charles River while on LSD, my foot going through a thin spot in the ice, upon which I quickly tip-toed to the other side.
When I moved to New York City, I came to appreciate the magic of a snowy night, when the snowflakes came down hard and fast. The city might never sleep, but a heavy storm shuts down 95 percent of the noise and bustle and I live for those times when I get to own the whole city. Long walks on the unplowed streets and unshovelled sidewalks. It’s been around 8 years since the last semi-respectable snow storm. By the next day, the magic is over, the sidewalks are carved with narrow paths that people have to pick their way through, the snow is turning black and the road salt is everywhere. Then, it becomes a chore to move around.
For dogs, the salt is a nightmare, although they do get to have their joy with fresh powder, as well. And suddenly revealed are all of the urine spots, their hidden message boards. And the people who think that snow gives them a free pass to leave their dog’s droppings behind, to re-emerge with the first thaw and snare us all. The small snowmen that people build and that dogs think we make for them to pee on.
I have always lived near the Hudson River, where the wind blows straight up off of New York Harbor and cuts through any piece of clothing you wear, along with your soul. It’s colder here than it is just a few blocks inland. It used to be quieter, as well, but that complaint is for another day, another story.
Snow now, for the past 10 years, has been more rare, more sparse. We get a bit, but nothing that shuts down the city. When the weather-entertainment complex gets a whiff of snow in the forecast, they usually treat it like the end of the world, to the point where people ignore it. One day, of course, they will cry wolf and they will be correct, and most people will be stuck without canned soup and the delis will all be closed and many will perish in icy deaths, but I could be exaggerating here. I always keep extra food and dog food around, just in case. I retain that primal urge for shelter and the safety of the cave.
We had an inch or two of snow last week. It melted a bit, then froze into a sheet of ice overnight. The city dumped massive amounts of salt, although not as much as last winter, when they dumped an obscene amount from the mountains of salt that they stockpile near the river. They dumped so much rock salt on Greenwich Street that it was two inches deep - no joke - and it blew in clouds up and down that block for weeks, reminding me of a dystopian chemical storm. In the past, after a big storm, they would plow it up on every street corner, and trucks would come by, gather it up, then back up to the river and dump it in. Those days are gone.
I used to like the snow - and I still enjoy it when it’s coming down - but I have a small dog, my own knees prefer warmth, and I don’t build snow forts anymore. When possible, I prefer to get in the car and head south before the New Year. There’s something freakish about spending January with a t-shirt on, dodging iguanas and checking in on the weather back home. If I ever think that I miss the snow, that notion is dispelled on the ride back north, two days of driving that take you from a colorful, fragrant landscape back to a monochromatic, frozen hell. I’ll put on another layer of clothing every few truck stops, start to watch for icy patches on the ground, and curse while I have to walk the little guy on the salty earth.
Still, I would rather suffer through the four seasons than go without them. I have friends from California and Hawaii who always remind me how much they love the Northeast in the fall but, when they visit in the winter, they invariably say, “I don’t miss THIS.” If “this” is the price I have to pay for living here, I’m okay with that. I escape it some years, endure it others. When the seasons slowly change and the earth comes back to life - and life never really ends, even when it’s frozen - I have gotten myself and my pack through another winter and living again becomes easy.
Let it snow.
Paul Vlachos is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. He was born in New York City, where he currently lives. He is the author of “The Space Age Now,” released in 2020, “Breaking Gravity” in 2021, and 2023’s “Exit Culture.”
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I also lament the diminishing snows here in Wisconsin. Snow is part of my gen x nostalgia.