SNOW DREAMS

I am the tender of the fire when the snows come. And they come. I am the protector of the hearth. Still they come.

I am not particularly fond of snow, but I do appreciate the change that it brings. Time seems to slow down. The landscape harbors a new silence. Boundaries disappear. All places become fluid, liminal zones. Snow also makes me think of two books that I enjoy.

The first is The Promise of Winter: Quickening the Spirit on Ordinary Days and in Fallow Seasons, with reflections by theologian Martin Marty and photographs by his photographer son Micah Marty. Each pair of pages has a photograph of a snowy landscape on one page and on the opposite one or two verses from a Psalm, a reflection upon the Psalm and the photograph, and an additional Bible verse that further elucidates the Psalm, reflection, and photograph. It is a book that I find soothing, especially when I am in a sad or dark moment. It is a way to center myself again, to reflect in my own right upon the photograph, the theme, the Biblical verses. As I recently read in Lincoln's Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk: "Modern studies confirm the salutary effects of faith on depression." (195) I already knew that through my own experience but it was nice to have it stated by someone who also identifies as a depressive—Shenk, himself. (This was also the passage of Lincoln's Melancholy I flipped open to when trying to decide if I wanted to read it. As soon as I read the passage, I knew that I was going to read the book.)

The second is Dreamers and Desperadoes: Contemporary Short Fiction of the American West, edited by Craig Lesley. This was a book I had to read in college for an American literature class. The primary reason that I associate this book with snow is due to Ivan Doig's short story, "Winter of '19," which Doig adapted from Dancing at the Rascal Fair specifically for this collection. The story is a harrowing account of sheep farmers—a farmer, his son Varick, and his brother-in-law Rob—that must head out in a blizzard to get hay for their flocks or risk losing all of their sheep. The trade-off is that they themselves may perish in the snow. And, if that was not enough, there is tension between the narrator and Rob. As he states, they are "brothers-in-law, partners in sheep, enemies." However, they must work together, against the snow and cold and blindness that nature has conjured or they will perish. Every time I read the story my stomach churns.

Snow. A dream in itself. A blanket that buries dreams.