Senses

Three-thirty in the morning, my bleary eyes open slightly. Behind the blinds is a soft yellowish-white muted light, as if a lantern were glowing just there, beyond the darkness, inviting me to come see.

Snow, lots of it. This storm is expected to be a doozy. We’ll see.

I peer outside and marvel at the silent scene before me. The wind is blowing--not the destructive, gale force winds we huddled through over the past month--but enough wind to make the snow swirl silently from the eaves, performing a mesmerizing snow-dance in the air before settling atop the drifts below. Silence is my companion here in the light/dark of the night/morning, where the stormy darkness is illuminated by reflected city lights on thick clouds, busily pelting out a miniature blizzard.

Only three days ago it was warm, sunny, breezy--partly spring. I walked the park trail near work, after hooking myself up to an artificial source of music in hopes of drowning out the industrial city sounds surrounding this little pocket park.

It didn’t work, at least not entirely. My feet thumped on the sidewalk with a cadence to match the tune blaring between my ears: “Everybody’s talkin’ at me, can’t hear a word they’re saying…” and here comes a person walking straight toward me. I smile and keep walking past, faster now. Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch, is that really a sound I hear above the music? Or is it merely the sensation of gravel beneath my feet, having left the hard cement for the more natural feel of rhythmic walking on the unfinished portion of the trail.

The two ponds are still frozen in the center. A pair of geese squat on the thin ice, sleeping. Two squirrels run clickety-clack up the side of a huge cottonwood tree, one chasing the other ever upward with repeated chattering noises, so loud that the squirrel noises infiltrate the earbuds, providing a high-pitched backdrop to the next tune: "American woman, stay away from me..." Are those squirrels fighting or courting, I wonder silently to myself.

Off in the distance across the southern pond I spy a couple with a shepherd dog walking toward a single fellow, trying in vain to control an unruly puppy. The dogs greet, jump, sniff, then tangle one another in leashes, spinning and yipping with delight. Yes, I can hear this as well, above the chords strumming behind the words inside. “Well I keep on thinkin’ ‘bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise…” come the words in my head but what my ears really latch onto is the sound of dogs laughing, joyful creatures caught up in exactly that split second of warmth and camaraderie and a right-now moment that is even more perfect than the last. Oh to be a dog.

My nose is running and I clear my throat, having reached the section of trail where the walk turns head-on into the breeze. It seems more bracing, stronger than it was on the first turn around the twin ponds. The coolness hits my face; my hair swirls about this way and that. I reach to brush it aside, latch it behind my ears, but it swipes my face again and again and again.

I return to the present moment, in front of the window, and find myself twirling a chunk of tousled hair between my fingers as I watch the snow dance around then down, down, down.

"How much snow so far?" he asks from behind me.

"About a foot."