On snow flurries

Snow flurries are nothing but Mother Nature playing with us mere mortals. Growing up in Minnesota, we never put any stock in snow flurries. Snow flurries could happen on any given day as if it were some sort of meteorological afterthought or mistake. Snow flurries never amounted to anything unless they were a real mistake and accumulated up to six inches. Most flurries were a few random flakes that fell lazily on a cold fall afternoon. Flurries in January were another matter because you always kept one on the heavens in case the weatherman had actually blown the forecast. It was always a little worse when you got psyched up for a real snow fall--ten inches--and you only got flurries. What a huge disappointment! The snow flakes would be huge as if they were really pieces of ash from a local volcano. They would seldom stick unless it was January, and then they could become dangerous if they landed on any patches of ice. Flurries on ice was worse then grease on glass. Flurries could be beautiful on a late Sunday afternoon down at the local ice rink, skating with your friends. Too much snow would clutter up the rink and make skating a difficult proposition, but a few flurries falling from a slate gray sky while the wind bites at your nose and ears is a sublime moment that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Your skates glide across the frosty surface of the glittery ice, your weight and inertia balanced against the steel as it cuts into the surface. Winter and the ice cold chill of a frigid January day is very misunderstood by most. Flurries are an expression of winter's bling, a season despised by most, loved by a few, and avoided by the foolish. Flurries are a metonymic expression of the soul of winter, that white fragile shroud within which Nature binds its hibernating body for a long winter's nap. Sleep and hibernation are the same metaphor, if not exactly the process. Bodies need rest, for a night, a month, several months, all beings need to sleep, if only the sleep of the just plain tired. Flurries are sent to remind us that sleep, rest, hibernation, winter, night, and death all mimic the same stillness and inaction that must logically come at the end of all activity. One cannot sustain constant movement or growth forever, inertia is constant in a vacuum with out gravity, but since we live on the earth in a real world, we come to a rest from time to time. Flurries are both an afterthought and a foreshadowing of what is to come. If fall does not foreshadow winter, the flurries that fall in October and November should remind any witnesses that the temperatures are going down, the days are getting shorter, and that mandatory rest period is about to start. I acknowledge this, but I always see the falling flurries as an invitation to go out and play, to put on a scarf and hat, maybe dig the gloves out of the summer hiding place so that I can go out and watch my breath condense as I breath. i prefer to be one with the flurries, not fear them, not run from, but to welcome the coming change. Snow flurries, misunderstood micro-crystaline hexagonal structures of frozen water floating gently on the breeze.