Snow Renewal

That's right. Snow renewal, not removal! I am reveling in the recent changes of weather around here. As school's close, people forget how to drive, and locals complain about defrosting their cars, I feel rejuvenated by the backdrop of white and new way of looking at my neighborhood (it looks so clean!).

Ironically, I began to cover a unit on weather with my students on the first day of snowfall this week, and my students and I discovered a Marcel Proust quotation embedded in our unit:

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."

Many of my students from Saudi Arabia and the UAE were seeing snow for the first time in their lives and the novelty of the experience was not lost on them at all. I have seen snow my whole life, and I still have chewed on this phrase over the last two days. It is a brilliant way to think about our relationship to weather. (You may remember the gloomier days of dark postings from the Nordic.) What a little bit of sunshine or snow or rain or wind does to change our surroundings from murky to bright, from sublime to treacherous, or from peaceful to agitated. After all, weather shapes our ways of life and our cultures; why would it have any less profound effect on us?

As a person who checks the weather forecast (can I bike to work today or not?) before she even hits snooze in the morning, I can say that the weather shapes my daily life in a very concrete way. These last few snowy days, although not exactly ideal biking weather, have been ideal for crisp, cool re-examination of my surroundings.

Yes, thankfully, winter even comes to Washington for a moment or two now and then.