I don’t think I’d be overstating things too terribly if I say that, in the American West, snow is something of a sacrament.
To be more accurate, water is the real sacrament here. But since a lot of our water falls first as snow in our mountains where it naps peacefully till summer and then melts, it is plainly logical that one should pay some pretty heavy homage to the miraculous snowflake.
Rivers and streams are Mother Nature’s transport system, bringing the mountain snowmelt down to nourish her valleys, and those water courses are then tapped into by farmers who irrigate thirsty fruit trees, hops fields, grapes, and more. If you additionally consider the hydroelectric power that we Westerners generate from water that began as snow, you’ll appreciate that cold, white stuff for us is more than something on which we ski and snowboard. Snow is darned near as essential to us as air.
It felt good, then -- very good -- to wake up to a fresh snowfall yesterday in the Pacific Northwest, since our winter weather the past couple of months has been unusually warm and dry and un-winter-like. The mountain snowpack has been looking a bit anemic, and when I heard a radio report that said that Mt. Rainier might get as much as 47” of snow in the next day or two, I believe a lot of us thought: Well this is more like it!
I took a camera in hand and hiked around the area where I live. A neighbor’s horse was exploring his suddenly-white pasture, and it seemed to me that photographic possibilities were falling from the sky along with snowflakes. The iconic Northwest fir trees were stunningly beautiful, and the witch hazel plant near my back door (it always blooms right in the middle of winter...what’s up with that?) looked spring-like, even in the chill.
Lastly, I photographed the snow-covered prayer flags that Tibetan friends gave us when they came over for a picnic last summer.
This canvas of white will last only a few days here in the lowlands. Up in the high country, however, the sacrament of snow will remain, sustaining us through even the warmest of days of summer.
