The Snow is Gone

A week and a half ago, we had snow,


snow,




snow,




snow,



snow.



It had been cold and snowing for three weeks.

We received a package we had ordered a few weeks earlier: a conversion kit for our bike trailer that would make it so we could pull the kids behind us while we cross-country skied.





We tried it out that Monday night and skied around the streets of our village: up and down some of the smaller hills, to the ends and back of a few dead-end streets, back and forth on the only paved street, and finally, out on a county road that winds along beside the creek. It was fun. We felt free. In the darkness we slid silently along the roadways in between rows of houses made cozy with snow.



It is sometimes hard to find ways to exercise, to get outside as a family, during the winter, but we decided this was going to be our activity. We would travel the back roads that spiral away from our back-road town.

And then, the next day, everything began to melt. It rained for a few days, and then it was sunny. The creek swelled to five or six times its normal size. The roads turned to gravelly mud. The sledding hill turned to green grass. Birds can often be heard chirping. A few days ago, we went to the park and played for a while. I rode my bike to work the other day and was not uncomfortably cold.

It is more convenient with the snow gone. My back likes not shoveling the driveway. We can drive more quickly on the roads.

However, our little cross-country ski rickshaw is still fully assembled, waiting, in the garage. The long poles that lead out from the body of it, the poles that connect Dad or Mom to the carriage, seem to yearn like a lonely person's arms. "Where is the snow?" it seems to be asking me every time I visit.