It was with no small delight that I watched the progress of the National Weather Service’s announcement proceed from ‘Winter Storm Watch’ to ‘Winter Storm Warning’. Waylaying activities for the evening with gladness, I ended up at home in a childhood joyousness, and waited for the snow to begin.

It snowed! We had several inches by midnight, fluffy and white, and coming down smartly at its outset.

And suddenly I was reminded of yet another reason to love the stuff: the sounds it conveys, all the way back to the substantial snows of earlier seasons, earlier years, earlier Christmases and school days; all of that.

Snow carries with it its own sounds, or more specifically the lack thereof. When I awoke just before midnight, the air was filled with – silence. There is a cotton-batting-like insulation against sound that wraps the house after the snow, removing the exterior crunches and clicks, rustles and myriad other noises that are found every day of the year, except during the snow. All I hear, and in concentrated form resounding against this silence, is the click-clack of my wood works clocks inside.

It is contradictory, but the snow also seems to enhance other sounds. The snowplow’s steady scrape as it makes first one, then immediately another, pass along my short section of road is condensed and clear, and unmistakable as the fallen snow is quickly cleared.

As well, planes flying overhead take on a hollow clarity, where their jet engines seem particularly defined and trackable. The engine sounds also seem to commence suddenly and then abruptly end, rather than presenting a slow approach and lingering exit.

As I sit writing now, the silence the snow has brought wraps me warmly in an embrace of the remembrance of prior decades and hopes of new Christmases that will bring not only the joyous strains of carols and the wintery fragrances of the season, but the sounds of snow.

June Pawlikowski Miller