Better to Visit Snow than to Host It

Many years have passed since I sat expectantly by my living room window in Milwaukee, waiting to see the very first snowflakes fall. I don't mean the first snowflakes of that winter. Rather, at the age of 23 having lived most of my life in Arizona, I anxiously awaited my very first ever sight of snowflakes actually falling from the sky and accumulating on the ground. Oh, I had seen plenty of snow on the ground before. Once in a while my parents and I had taken trips to northern Arizona to play in the snow…well after any storm had passed. And I did get to experience the pain of beginner skiing in Washington state one winter break when visiting my girlfriend's family. (I broke her older sister's skis, but that's another story.) But I had never seen the magical transformation of earth and concrete and asphalt to the wondrous white landscape of new fallen snow of which I'd read in romantic books and stories. So there I sat, a first year medical student ignoring my anatomy and histology texts to marvel in this miraculous transformation occurring before my eyes. We got four inches of brand new snow that night, and I rapturously witnessed every single inch accumulate in the yard and driveway outside.

The next morning I learned one those bitter life lessons that the romantics never mention: In order to get to school I first had to remove all that new fallen beauty from the driveway behind my car. And it was a long driveway. Now someone may wonder why I couldn't just drive my car out, given that four inches of new snow is a relatively harmless amount. Well, Arizona boy who had never seen snow fall had never driven on it either, so I quickly got myself into the "high rpm but no traction or movement" conundrum. I also discovered that snow that falls in an industrial city like Milwaukee is not pristine white, but a dingy gray. So, with my romantic notions duly smashed, I resolutely shoveled away and eventually made it to school after only a few really scary moments behind the wheel of my 1958 Chevy.

This scenario repeated itself enough times over the ensuing four years that when it came time to pick internships I limited myself solely to locations where snowfall is rare or non-existent. I ended up in Portland, OR. Although it does occasionally snow there, it never did during my internship year. Yet a mere hour's drive away was majestic Mount Hood and some really cool ski areas where I did learn the sport, without breaking skis or knees in the process. That was when I learned that the best way to enjoy snow is to just visit it once in awhile, without inviting it to come home for an entire winter. That lesson has served me well through the remainder of my adult life, with the rare exception of the Navy assigning me somewhere like Washington, DC……

Speaking of which, while Number One Stepdaughter and friends in D.C. suffered through a megaversion of my first encounter with falling snow, I was in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan enjoying the Sapporo Snow Festival as a Navy visitor. That was a lot of fun, and even though it seldom stopped snowing the whole time we were there, I never had to shovel a single flake nor drive a single foot. That's how snow should be experienced. Here are just a few pictures that don't even come close to capturing the beauty of that visit.