If you have never joined Maggie and I on one of these walks, the procedure is a simple one. We walk to that demarcation where the pavement ends and step into a realm where the wonders never end.
Won’t you join us today, February 2, 2025?
Winter finally arrived to Olympia. It did not rush in with a blizzard but it did announce itself with a blanketing of snow, reason enough for Maggie and I to go for a walk around the farm. Toby joined us, always a welcomed addition, for Toby is the Clown, Maggie the Serious One and I, your humble moderator, the Simple Bard.
It’s hard to tell, on days like today, that Maggie is half a year short of nine. She still has puppy in her, and it surfaces in the snow. She goes vertical and snatches snowflakes from the air. She does her own version of a snow angel, rolling happily on the ground. I swear, some will doubt this but I swear, she smiles and laughs, an impossible claim to prove but I will believe its veracity until the day I’m dust to dust.
As is my norm, walks like this one take me back in time, the heavenly snowfalls of my youth. Back then, we’re talking sixty, seventy years ago, it snowed more in Western Washington than it does today. I make no statement about the why of it, but I am absolutely sure that it did.
Our neighborhood had, wait while I mentally count, fifteen children in a two block area, all in the six-to-twelve range, a cornucopia of youth, and youth in the snow is a perfect storm for unbridled fun and mischief.
We lived on a hill, a great sledding hill, and parents would set up traffic barriers at the top and bottm of that hill, not allowing traffic to ruin the sledding. Within hours of the first accumulation, snow forts were constructed and sides chosen for the snowball fight to end all snowball fights. Every lawn had a snow family, not limited to a snowman but also snowwoman and snowchildren, thank you very much.
In the evening, sun down, parents home from work, the sledding hill would be lined on both sides with lanterns. From nowhere a table would appear, and on that table paper cups and thermoses would be placed, the thermoses filled with coffee and hot chocolate, and several parents would bring their barbecues out and start fires in them, portable warming stations for parents and children.
It was a childhood delivered from the heavens.
A little older . . .
Walking with my first girlfriend, Eva Bergstrom, through the silent snowfall, sneaking an awkward kiss, awkward as only a sixteen year old kiss can be, but so special it is still remembered sixty years later.
Older still . . .
College snowball fights, not for the weak of mind or will, seriously brutal snowball fights, at times bloodshed, and inevitably a panty raid planned and executed at some point during the white evening, with all activities ending at the student union building for, again, hot chocolate, a staple among snowball fighters, evidently.
Older still . . .
A brutally cold January evening, snow on the ground that entire month, somewhat of an anomaly, home from college for the weekend, watching The Tonight Show with my dad, he dies, heart attack, over in an instant, the snow falling down, covering the dreams of youth, muffling the carefree exuberance, marking a change, a demarcation, if you will, between child and manhood, as the snow fell softly, covering the tire tracks of the ambulance, pulling out of our driveway.
Older still . . .
Cussing the snow, making driving to work difficult, why the hell do we have to work on days like this, cussing and muttering and completely forgetting the joy that frozen precipitation once brought us, forgetting those feelings of recklessness, that feeling of never growing old, that feeling of invincibility . . .
And, finally,
Older still, on the last lap of a long journey, deep reflections return me to the childhood long past, return me to the appreciation of this life, return me to the wonder of a snowfall, and a man and his dog, walking through a curtain of flakes.
Thank you for joining us on this walk. Y’all be careful walking home. It’s a bit slick out there and we don’t want you slipping.
Join us next time. Just keep your eye peeled for that special spot where the concrete ends and the wonders begin.
Bill (and Maggie)
I’ve got books, oodles of books, all on Amazon, paperback and kindle, look for them under William Holland, or hit me up for a recommendation. I had a hell of a month in January, $19 delivered by Amazon to yours truly, thank you my loyal followers.
