Coat of One Color

I drove to Buffalo Friday morning. A weather system had sprinted through western New York the night before, headed almost due east. It wasn’t overly big in areal extent but it had some energy and speed. Areas away from the lake and higher in elevation got heavier accumulations, but the route from Webster to Downtown Buffalo had been equally coated with only about three inches of snow from start to finish. The snow’s consistency was very moist, and the storm hadn’t packed too much of a wallop in terms of wind, so the snowflakes were able to grab ahold of the first thing they touched and stay put. Like a whipped cream layer on every surface. No plant, object or surface went uncoated. If it wasn't for body heat, every critter would have looked like an unshorn sheep.

Normally when you look at a stand of bare trees and peer into the mass of wood you see branches but their dark appearance can make it hard to distinguish the branches of one tree from the next. This snow coat had been able to individually wrap the smallest of twigs on every tree, and with the storm being pretty freshly finished, the wind and sun had not yet begun to strip that delicate coating. In that gray morning light it was not hard to see nearly the entire structure of any individual tree. And no two trees alike, just like the snowflakes. Somewhere past Batavia there was a stretch where a fog layer had developed over the vast open fields, but was elevated off the ground somewhat. The tops of the taller trees and the occasional cell tower faded upward to nothingness. It was like driving in a dream, and what is possibly the most boring and uninteresting stretch of road I know of was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time.