Merciless

This past weekend, we got our largest snow fall of the season.  It's the middle of April.  We got close to twenty inches dumped on us just after the snow from the actual winter was starting to melt away.  It was a weird random storm that just popped up and crushed everyone's dreams of the start of Spring.  We had a few days of mid forties weather.  The sun had been out.  What remained of the snow was that nasty grey stuff that everyone hates but are deep down happy to see because that means that Spring is just around the corner.  

As the snow accumulated throughout the day on Saturday, I kept looking out the front window and wondered where this was at the start of Winter.  Sure we had snow, but it was definitely late arriving.  When you think of Minnesota in December you automatically start to think of huge snow banks and kids sledding and canceled school.  At least here in the Twin Cities, it was cold no doubt, but the snow just didn't seem as bad as it was a few years ago.  At Christmas time, there was just enough snow on the ground to make it feel like winter.  There wasn't much of that magical Christmas feel to it.  

When you look at a calendar and see that it is April and then take a peek outside and see close to two feet of snow fall over the course of a weekend, it feels like a merciless winter.  As much as I love winter, it left a defeated feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I thought that I was done shoveling snow until later in the year, but I had to go out a couple of more times to clear the driveway and sidewalk.  It wasn't that nice light snow that you occasionally get either, it was heavy and wet.  The kind of snow that hurts your back after shoveling it for an hour straight. 

But still, when I looked to our front yard and saw that smooth clean look of freshly fallen snow, I still had a thought of how beautiful it looked.  I didn't shovel the front walk until Sunday afternoon, and every time I looked out the front window Saturday night, the snow brightened the evening.  It reflected the moonlight and the street lights.  It reminded me of why I love the winter so much.  Even if it was the middle of April.