posted
It's a shame to shovel snow. There ought to be a better way.
Snow is winter's beauty. It's a glowing blanket that softens and calms. Snowflakes float down effortlessly like sub-zero angels and change the bleak scenes of dead trees, empty fields, and gloomy streets into an almost holy stillness. After a fresh snowfall, every view is worth framing.
Shoveling is everthing snow is not. It's harsh; it's mechanical; it's unlovely. A wedge of metal pushing and scraping. A strain; a chill; an unwelcome sweat.
It's less work to shovel the virgin snow. It hasn't been hardened by the profane impression of reality. Unmolested, it remains yielding - pliable - still easy to move. Come to her privately - intimately - and she won't fight you. The motion of your shovel can be almost gentle.
If you wait, unwilling to be the agent of beauty's demise, incapable of betraying her trust, it will be others who violate her. Their trespass steals her softness and dulls her shine. It is no longer such a sin to move her. But the snow has learned. Emibttered now, she holds to the ground, unwilling to give up an inch. You have to pry up her clinging fingrers with the blade of your shovel.
Snow has to be moved. It is often inconvenient and sometimes dangerous. And a well groomed path can have its own type of beauty just as the act of shoveling, with its rythymn and motion, can bring its own kind of joy. But there ought to be a better way.
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