Wrapped around and clinging to the tree branches outside my window, these water vapors frozen by the cold of winter into crystals—each of them unique—amassed together into the fluff of snow….I am considering the new snow on this February morning, letting my attention linger on it after a night of its silent falling while I'm sitting by the large window in my apartment in the quiet hours of morning.
It’s warm where I'm sitting, a sleeping cat beside me, and I can see hawks flying through the gray monocolor sky, a few peeps of birds, no doubt huddling for warmth beneath the eaves of a nearby building. We’re in stillness here, before the plows have rolled their heavy bodies through the streets to pile and shunt the snow off to the curbs to make way for the continuation of ever moving, ever bustling, ever frantic city life.
Now, while the snow is clean and uniform across the tops of the bare tree branches, its effect is tranquilizing, sedating even. There's comfort in this, albeit of a depressive kind—not, I should say, depressive as in sad, but depressive in the way that winter and cold can feel like a concavity on the earth's surface that becomes mirrored in the psyche. The becoming of life slowed in this dimpled depression of the year.
It's not unpleasant, but neither would I call it joyful. Not like those first snows of the season in, say, November or December, when the novelty and beauty of the falling powder can be positively glee-inspiring, like a joyous break of light from the encroaching darkness before the solstice, an invitation, above all, to play.
It’s not so with these February snows. We are in the depths of the hibernation time now, neither frolicking in after Fall with the earned exhaustion of the year before our rest, nor bursting out to the revealed rejuvenation of life in Spring.
These days of winter deep in mid-February often feel to me like the most challenging time in our cycle of seasons. The winter has been upon us for some time and it will stretch out from now for a good while longer. And yet, I am also aware of the protective nature of snow. In the Kabbalistic tradition of Living Torah, mystics speak of snow as representing gevurah, strength, considered the power of judgment, an acknowledgment of limitation and boundaries on our mortal lives. And yet, snow doesn't last. When it inevitably melts, the mystics note, and the water becomes nourishment for everything on which it falls, the land is fed with chesed, loving kindness.
It is beautiful, this February morning snow. Let it be a blessing of protection for now. Let it be a reminder of warmer, kinder days to come.