I knew the snow was coming, but for a while I wasn't paying attention. I was upstairs writing on my old Smith-Corona, working hard and writing in the groove. Then the power started to flicker. I knew the snowfall was for real. We lost it for a bit, but it came back. I turned out the lights and worked at the typewriter with just my headlamp. I wrote three wonderful pages. Then I played some guitar. It was around 11:00 at night. I came downstairs and everyone was going to bed. Some more guitar, jamming in the key of D. Then I looked at Marley--and I could see the big snowfall outside the front windows--so I knew it was time to go out. Normally, I would cringe at taking a long break from writing, but on this night I felt good; my cells were churning away with total splendor. And when things feel good, I've learned to keep moving forward. Thirty years on a planet will do something to you. Thirty-one will do more--so my point is not the exactness of the age, but rather the experience. If the wisdom is flowing, I blame my thoughts and the phone calls (to VA & CA & CO) & of course the lesson I learned from the Great Buzzard--but that is skipping ahead, and so I will pause, sip, think, and then write logically. I must also scrounge up a new page because this one is almost full. Yes, I wrote this thing with pen and paper, but we'll get to all that later.
So I geared up & Marley & I went out the front door. It was a dark night, but the world was white. About eight inches had fallen. My neighbor was shoveling and I saw him and talked with him for a few seconds. "Well, I'm going to go exploring," I said, & my words could not have been any truer. First, we ran up the sidewalk. The fresh snow felt great. Marley ran with big bouncing strides--into the night! Nowhere to go but forward. A playful mind comes easy in the snow. Feet can find the old forgotten joys. Up the street, snow on cars, streetlight glows, the Great Quiet of snow, a quiet I love--the stuff must really dampen sound. But the sky was clear--very nice out, 35ish for sure. 32 and up is heavenly.
Then we left our neighborhood & went running down the street. I decided to let Marley lead the way. Of course we followed our usual walk route, but Marley tended to go to the great powder path of the road. But I led him back to the sidewalk, and we ran on. I had to stop and ventilate, take off my gloves and unzip my jacket. Running in the snow felt great & for a few moments I had a great life vision--I've always been moving forward and going where my good steps take me. "This is most certainly a real life experience," I thought.
And down the road I saw my first plow truck. It looked like a monster. Then we walked down the hill. I saw two people. Marley saw them too but he didn't care. He had his p-mail to check and with all the snow his job was harder (the inbox will fill up). I followed the two guys down the hill. They went to meet three other guys who were shoveling in the road. All five guys were standing by this giant snow mound, like the kind of mound you see near parking lot peripheries in the winter. But this big 7-foot high mound was in the road. One guy had a snow-skate, a skateboard deck mounted on top of a snowboard-like bottom. In the pre-communication moments, my mind ran wild--I thought this kid was going to ramp off the mound and do something terrifyingly cool. But he just piddled down the hill toward the mound.
"That's some pile you got there," I said to the kid with the yellow jacket and the cigarette.
"Oh yeah," he said. "Hey is that a husky?" but he didn't even give me a chance to answer before he was off talking with his buddy.
"Oh, I see," I said. "It's a car."
A car had been stuck on the hill and in the road and these guys had covered the car with snow, which was probably a terrible idea--but they were young and perhaps they knew the owner.
Now that other people were involved, my night was getting weird. A car roared down the hill, threading the needle between the kids & the car/snow mountain. "Asshole," said one kid. The driver was going way too fast for the conditions. It was time to get off the road. I went a little farther down the hill, then off the road to the right.
I knew instantly what I had to do. Forget those silly boys, the buzzards are the thing to see. So I went down, just a little farther, until I was standing in the right place so I could see the place where all the buzzards had gathered. (I say buzzards, but you could also say vultures. They were turkey vultures.)
"This is where they live," I said to Marley. Bang! A snowplow clipped a curb. The birds didn't care. Marley sat down in the snow. I looked at him as he looked at the birds. He saw them. Words formed in my head & I wished I had a tape recorder: I saw the buzzards, thirty or forty buzzards resting in the treetops, creatures about the size of turkeys, dark birds silhouetted against snowy branches & a light-colored sky.
The birds were sleeping on treetops, branches, and on top of a nearby supermarket where the heat was surely welcome. Marley and I watched them for minutes. They were mostly still. But sometimes: a fluttering of wings, which sounded wonderful. If I had wings, I would flutter them all the time.
Then Marley began to growl. He was pointing to a dark spot in a bush top. I thought it was actually just a dirty old plastic bag. But no. It was the lone vulture, sleeping down low away from all the others. It was about 20 feet away, a big black bird with shaggy feathers. No need to look at the far away birds. Here was my subject, my teacher. This bird was the one. "Marley, be nice, no growl." Marley looked at me. "We must treat this animal with respect."
It was a big bird at the top of a not so big bush, bending the branch that it sat on. But it was a stable position. The bird seemed tired. He or she had just weathered an all-day rainstorm that had morphed into 8 inches of snow. It was deep in bird REM, so much so that I worried about it. "But if the bird was dead, it would surely fall," I thought. Birds live outside on much colder nights.
Soon the guys that were by the car/snow mound walked away. Marley & I continued down the street to the shopping center where more plow trucks were working hard, cashing in on the crop of snow. These plow drivers must know about coffee. They probably go all night and go all over trying to get as many plowing gigs as they can. The one guy was ramming forward, then speeding in reverse back across the parking lot to where he started so he could bite off another chunk. I guess it was easier than turning around. It's not often that you get to see a car doing 20 in reverse in a parking lot. It looked dangerous. But the driver was in control. The best part for them (besides the cash) was surely the ramming of the plow into the big pile at the end of the lot. People rarely get to ram their cars into stuff. Marley seemed like he was ready to walk back. And I was too.
So back we went. I of course had to stop again for silent council with the wise old buzzard. Marley did not growl. The bird was still there. I crouched down low so I could see this animal's beak silhouetted against a white backdrop. The bird rested smoothly like an ancient champion. I was thinking about evolution & and quote of my own that I should ask my friend about, when a plow truck came to the street corner where I was standing. The car/snow mountain was nearby, and so I acted. I flagged down the plow truck. They rolled down a window. "Hey, how's it going?" I asked.
"Good, how's it going?"
"I just wanted to tell you guys that there's a car in there." I pointed.
"What? Stop playin'," said the driver.
"No, he's right--I see the mirror," said the other man in the car.
"I wanted ya'll to know & I don't know what the right thing to do is. Maybe you could radio."
They weren't really sure either, and they drove off to make more money on the next gig. I checked for traffic & went to the snow-covered car. I put my right glove (which was the first one I grabbed) on my left hand & started uncovering the car. The moment I touched the car, a big blue flash filled the sky! Lightning, or perhaps a power outage. Then darkness, a flicker, and then the street lights were soon back. I went back to uncovering the car. It was a Chrysler. I made it so you could see the lights--reflective I hoped--in the front and back. It was no longer a beautiful snow pile waiting to get rammed--it was a dangerous obstacle & I knew that I had done the right thing. Shit, I might have even saved a life.
We walked home, walking around fallen limbs & being careful not to walk under sagging branches. Marley was still checking the smells & marking his territory with urine. A few cars drove by & I was reminded of the lonely beauty of the road late at night.
Then in our neighborhood, I saw a big truck stuck in the snow at the top of the street. The guy got out. I went over. He had a plan & a shovel, but I noticed him looking at me in a bit of a weird way. Yes, it was almost one a.m., but lots of people were out on this starry night.
And as I walked off, I realized it was the glove, the black glove on my left hand. Being a righty glove, the glove's thumb faced out, not in, and it looked as though I had a horribly misshapen hand. Oh well. I had work to do.
I went inside. Got a seat, paper, pen, blanket, cup, & my emergency Chivas. I knocked the snow off the crape myrtle branches (always good to ease the burden), leashed Marley to the tree, made a fine snow/scotch drink. And then I sat there on the front steps for an hour or so & wrote this story with warm hands, cold feet, and the sound of dripping snow water with also the sporadic clashing blasts of distant snow plows bashing into curbs and concrete.
And now I will take these cold handwritten pages & finish my drink . . . . ah . . . . cold drinks stay cold a long time outside on winter nights, & I will take Marley, who's all balled up in his Husky Glory, and we will go inside and enjoy the easy warmth of home.
[Note to the reader: As you know, I wrote this whole thing by hand that night, with my headlamp of course. It's nice to look back on these pages because you can see how I was writing faster and messier as the night went on. I was getting tired and I didn't want to stay outside all night. But I had to write the whole thing and get to the end. And I knew right away that this would be a nice thing to put up on the blog, but I wanted to keep it as I wrote it. So now, as I re-typed these pages, I only changed typos and major errors. I resisted the urge to add or edit. This piece is how I wrote it that night, with all those &s (something I often do to save time when I'm journaling or writing by hand). Thanks to the lone buzzard, and thanks for reading, Jeff]
