Part of the white-day experience is identifying animal tracks.
Photo Above: Sam, Granddad and Eli marvel at a sign of wildlife left in the new snow. © Bruce Ingram.
The forecast is for snow to begin during the wee hours, and I can’t sleep because of the excitement the day to come will bring. Every hour or two I awake and peer out Elaine’s and my bedroom window to check if flakes have begun to fall. Finally around 4 a.m., I look out and the outline our sidewalk creates in the dark has disappeared—a sure sign of snowfall.
I rush downstairs, fling open the front door, and inhale the icy cold purity of fresh snow falling. By the looks of the stoop and sidewalk, a solid four inches have accumulated, which means that the Botetourt County, Virginia, high school where I teach will close as will, more importantly, the nearby elementary school my grandsons Sam and Eli attend.
I bound up the stairs, reach our bedroom, and then become conflicted whether or not to return to bed (as tradition and my wife demand) or immediately fire up our wood stove, so it will be, as Elaine says, “toasty warm” when she comes down for breakfast. My spouse then makes the decision for me.
“If it’s snowing, don’t you dare come back to bed,” she groggily mumbles. “You’ll be squirming around and knocking off the covers. Go start the stove.”
Orders received, I light the fire, and soon the entire downstairs is suffused with the acrid, yet strangely appealing, smell of red oak burning. For an hour or so, I alternately feed the fire and bring up more firewood from our garage . . . periodically taking breaks to watch the falling snow.
Around 6 a.m., I fix French toast for Elaine (another snow day tradition—breakfast in bed), partly as a peace offering for waking her up, but mostly because she’s the most perfect wife imaginable. I also text our daughter Sarah, who lives across the hollow with her husband and their two sons, to let me know when she needs a break from Sam and Eli, who will be just as hyperactive because of the precipitation as their grandfather is.
That call comes around 10 a.m. when Sarah confirms that the boys have already built a snowman and are ready to move on to another favorite wintertime activity—searching for animal tracks in the snow. As I near Sarah and David’s house, I espy the boys hiding—none too well—behind trees and waiting to pelt me with snowballs. I feign surprise at their treachery and let them launch a few preemptive strikes before I respond with a flurry of my own.
A logging road of nearly a mile winds its way around most of our 38 acres, and the boys and I next go questing along the pathway. Veterans of several winters of this activity, both youngsters easily identify deer and turkey tracks, and I help them distinguish between the raccoon and opossum ones.
Lunch follows on the agenda: Elaine’s homemade vegetable soup and blackberry cobbler from berries she and I gathered back in July.
We then say goodbye to the boys and spend the afternoon alternately reading and napping by the woodstove. That evening after a spirited game of Scrabble, played with the aid of lantern light as the power has now gone off, we cuddle and talk on the couch across from the stove. When the embers start to die, I insert a night log (a slab of black locust) and we head upstairs. It’s been another perfectly marvelous snow day.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2023 issue.
