Snow Day in April

Of course it snows in April. My chldhood April came in like a lion and out like a lamb to describe the last difficult birthing of spring; here snow comes to make the frantic season of lambing just that more difficult.

I'm not lambing, so I revert to childhood memories of snow days. The shoop shoop of my snow trousers with their smooth water-resistant surface is like the leggings we wore under our dresses on schooldays or the smooth denim of the flannel-lined jeans of Saturdays and snow days.

Snow was either packing--suitable for snowballs, snowmen, snowangels or sledding; or not. I didn't need the fine differentiations ascribed to Inuit peoples.

The tell tale squeak beneath my boots tells me this is packing snow. I smile even though I probably wont make a snowman.  But I could, and that knowledge cheers me as I watch the snow curling neatly into little pom poms as it comes off the front of my boots.

I like the democratising of snow. It falls equally on things. I like the shortening of the horizon that comes with a full snow sky such as today, not the desultory flakes or the hard almost-hail that flies in like wasps.

These snowflakes are steady, large, feather-like, and the sky is full of them. As I try to make out the horizon, I understand the old tales of farmers out in the snow and lost. Even on this road that I know so well, it would be easy to miss the landmarks.

And snow that keeps on coming reminds me of the stories of ewes and their lambs hunkered up against a dyke and found safely days later because they had created a little pocket of air.

But today the snow is benign. The breeze is still. The sun is climbing higher and peering through the milky sky.  Already the snow is softening. The shoop shoop has changed tone as the snow has melted on the insides of my trousers.