"Snowbound -- Let's Sleep in Today"

The "Christmas" playlist on the iPod eventually gave way to the more generic "Winter" one -- less festive, perhaps, but more seasonally appropriate.  A few songs survived the transition, but two that never fail to bring a smile to our face and a winsome longing to our soul are Donald Fagan's "Snowbound, let's sleep in today..." and Over the Rhine's "I wanna get snowed in with you..."  Perhaps it is that vestigial longing from childhood for those magical school cancellations that offered bonus time happily unprogrammed and free, but adulthood rarely allows for such frivolity.  Which, I suppose, is why the songs strike such an alluring note.

And then the songs came true.  Snowbound.  Snowed in.  Since last weekend's 12-inch of dump of snow we have been defining the phrase, "hunkered down."  After teaching a class on Saturday morning and making a quick run to the grocery store we haven't left the property, nor spent anytime trying to gin up a reason to.  Not that we have had much of a choice.  The county plows didn't clear the roads until yesterday morning.  I had fired up the tractor and snow blower and made a passable tunnel through the driveway, but that's where the possibilities ended.  I noticed a truck or two manage some passage, but we saw no urgency.  We have freezers full of last summer's harvest, and shelves lined with fruits of the canning kitchen.  Church was cancelled on Sunday.  We had no other obligations.  And so we stayed put, happy to have a habitable refuge.  We have a fireplace, windows through which to enjoy the view, books to read, projects to complete, and each other.

But we do not live here alone.  The dogs occasionally need some time outdoors and in addition to pressing business they love to romp in the snow.  Dolphin-diving through the drifts, they explore and frolic in each other's ruts, and toss with their noses the corgi equivalent of snow balls -- "Nose balls" perhaps -- and require some urging or bribing to return inside.

There are the dogs, but also the chickens.  The ladies don't mind the cold -- 3-below-zero yesterday morning -- but they are narrow-minded about the snow.  After I released them from their cozy coop at dawn they descended the ramp into the relatively dry and covered run, only to gather at the threshold of the outer door and halt.  An electric fence would not have contained them more effectively than the blanket of snow  that greeted them.  After surveying the options, they reversed course and opted to see what they could scratch up inside.  Later in the day I shoveled a path around the coop -- more for my egg-gathering benefit than theirs -- and a clearing outside the run.  Excavated straw made for a patio of sorts and I noticed them crowding into the clearing at intervals during the day.   The clearing, but no further.  Of course by yesterday their food and water containers were running low, necessitating still more travels from the house to the coop.  It's work trudging through a foot of snow -- work, and of course cold.  I have yet to find a pair of gloves that adequately keep my fingers warm, though the doubled socks, winter boots and the insulated Carhartt bib overalls do a pretty good job with the rest of me.  As is true in the rest of our living, it wasn't long before I was following a rut, dug by repetition.  All the attention must have been appreciated.  The girls rewarded me with 10 eggs gathered before dusk.

 Today, of course, will be different.  The roads have been plowed.  There are obligations to satisfy.  Life moves back into the more familiar and larger ruts we have cut by commitment and routine.  And it, too, will be good.  It will be nice to see what else has been going on in the world outside the fenceline of Taproot Garden.  But for this bitter and stormy weekend, winter has held us as happy hostages. 

And we will look forward to the next time.