A beautiful text about the weather, but under the surface also about the endless toil
On display outside right now, a mighty battle rages between Mother Nature and man/machine.
From nowhere rises a greyish-purple cloud, the size of the entire sky: an endless reservoir of snow, blown onto streets, sidewalks, and roofs by a relentless wind.
Pitted against this force are humans with shovels, tractors with snow blades, plow trucks — all working day and night to sweep the streets clear, carving tracks through the snow and pushing it onto sidewalks like a giant cross-country ski trail. There, shovels and smaller trucks gather the masses into clusters of dirty white mounds.
Those mounds — nay, mountains — are soon made pristine again by falling snow, like glaciers blown south from Svalbard by the wind.
Some schools are closed.
Trains are cancelled.
Parked cars turn into igloos.
And it’s like something out of a fairy tale.