Too Bad You missed It

Over the recent long weekend, I watched our visiting nine-year-old granddaughter step off a shoveled pathway into the deep, powdery snow of our yard. Tentatively, like entering dark pond waters, probing for bottom, she lowered the boot of her first foot through the snow’s soft surface until it disappeared, coming to rest somewhere below. Then, with intention to preserve the snow’s unspoiled surface, she swung her other foot over the bank, planting it next to the first. She stood for a moment, looking as if she had dropped from above, snow up to her knees, and beamed.

“Careful,” I said with a smile. “If you fall into one of the drifts over there, we might not find you until spring.” It was all the encouragement she needed to head directly for them. She had arrived with her brother from Philadelphia with a goal of disappearing into powdery snow, such as our icy winter temperatures had provided. They left behind a few inches at home, but it was unfriendly snow—wet, heavy, and crusted on top. Buried alive in New Hampshire until spring was the better offer.

I remember the feeling, hearing there would be snow overnight, and going to the windows in the morning to open the shades, seeing the ground covered, and the air still thick with delicate flakes. My brothers and I would be compelled to stop for breakfast, but quickly outside, setting up toboggans for races downhill. They were doing the same in Hancock the weekend our family was here, conducting the cardboard sled races behind the meeting house for the annual Winter Frolic, under perfect conditions.

As for me, which is what I want to tell you, I ended up last week flat on my back in the deep snow, staring at the tops of trees. On our morning walk, Huckleberry had “alpined” over a large bank created by plows at the end of the driveway, and I had followed, accustomed to hiking over such piles, which were usually compacted into crusty mounds of snow and gravel. Instead, given the weeks of bitter cold conditions, the hill crumbled under me so that I had to scale it on hand and knees—even thinking I might be forced to retreat to find another way around—until finally summiting and tumbling down the far side.

I had been similarly prostrate, many times, years ago—at the end of a toboggan run—and understood, instinctively, that getting slowly back to my feet would plunge me deeper into the powder. Special care would need to be taken to keep snow from getting under my collar, down my glove, in my boots. But the sky above was a perfect blue. The air was calm. I was dry. I folded my hands across my chest, and lay still. And, thus, in those few minutes, I was possibly as comfortable, and at rest, as I had been in fifty years. Blanketed by silence. The only thing I would have added to the moment was a kaleidoscope of snow from above. In which case, you would have seen me with my tongue out to catch the flakes. I thought, Huck will notice I’m missing, at some point, and come back. I’ll wait. I am happy like this.

I heard the sound of a squirrel jumping from one branch to another. Too bad, Huck, wherever you are. You missed it.

Published in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, February 24, 2026