Snow Day

For my entire life, I've lived in places that have seen snow....once or twice....always in historic data. 1959, 1926...you get it. Even places like Los Angeles have seen snow in times past, but it is always a once-in-a-lifetime thing when it happens. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I always held out hope that I'd be around for the next historic snowfall but it never happened -- ever -- in any place we lived in CA. It got tantalizingly close a few times in Paso Robles, but no real snow, ever, on our property. 

So you can imagine my Christmas morning-level glee when we woke up this morning to this. It looked like a Breughel painting across the countryside. 

I put on my snow shoes, walked around outside and snapped a few pics, just to be out in it. Snow is not at all unusual here, but since it doesn't usually stick around long and doesn't fall more than a few inches at a time, people mostly love it. Big Ag scraped his windows off and went to work, since he has 4WD and a short commute.

What surprised me was how bright everything was. Here in Oregon, we have a fair amount of gray skies and green trees, grass, etc. With the snow, it was like someone turned up the brightness level on the computer by a level of about 100. The ground was bright. The sky was bright. Everything from horizon to horizon reflected the daylight. I had no idea.

One of the things I vowed to myself is that sometime during my lifetime, I'd live in a place with 1) four full seasons, and 2)where I would wake up to snow on the ground. I can cross those item off my bucket list. But even though the box has been checked on snow, I still hope we see some more of the white stuff before the season is over, usually at the end of February.