First Impressions of a Minnesota Blizzard
A few months ago, I mentioned to a friend in the MFA program that I was worried snow would make the lovely steep hills that we drive to and from campus every day impassable. She gave me a strange look and laughed off the idea. In my head, I thought she was crazy—how could she think ten inches of snow wouldn't block our route for a week?
That brings us to this message that popped up on my phone last weekend: the forecast for my first Minnesota blizzard. And folks, it was a good one. As promised, it snowed bucketfuls overnight Sunday into Monday. Before I fell asleep, MSU called off classes for Monday for severe weather conditions (whiteouts are no joke). When I awoke, everything outside my window was a blindingly bright pure white. The roads were untouched, yards blanketed in smooth marshmallow fluff—that oddly satisfying vision of unblemished perfection.
It was glorious, reminding me of childhood snow days in Kentucky spent taking those first footsteps into the ankle-deep snow and tracking animal footprints and ephemeral impressions. There was nothing better as a kid than school being cancelled and being returned to a strange state of pre-industrialism, where you couldn't hear the sounds of engines or tires. Even as a young adult in 2015, I remember the joy of Snow-pocalypse on my undergrad campus as classes were cancelled for days straight. We reveled in the alien landscape of white, relishing being trapped on campus with our friends and being unable to travel to work. It took a week for that first snowstorm in February 2015 to be cleared to the point of safe-ish travel, and then, we were hit with the largest snowstorm I had ever experienced just weeks later, which shut down all roads for another week.
Last Monday, I played the part of a good graduate student, and instead of reveling in the childlike wonder of 13 inches of snow, I did homework for the better part of the morning. I thought to myself that I would just go outside in the afternoon to enjoy some snow-trudging. It would be me and the neighborhood kids and the natural silence that only comes without automotive travel.
However, by noon, I heard the distinctive sound of the snow plows scraping down the street. Then, a commotion in the parking lot of my apartment. I scrambled to the window to see the perfectly untouched snow behind our cars being plowed into a muddy pile. Then, I heard a strange sweeping sound. A golf-cart-sized vehicle I had never seen before was using a high-powered car-wash-like brush to sweep the sidewalks clean of snow. Behind that, neighbors were already out with shovels and grim expressions. Below me in the parking lot, one of my apartment-mates had already excavated their car and left, while another began the arduous process of digging hers out. I ventured out with my camera for only a couple of minutes, embarrassed at the strange, and even judgmental, stares I received for wanting to enjoy this experience—as if I was entitled because I was taking pleasure in the new experience rather than working to remove its presence.
In Minnesota, there is no period allowed for awe. It snows 13 inches, and they get on with it.
The day after the blizzard, classes were back to their normal schedule. I dug my car out and drove to class, marveling at the hills, which were, by some strange magic, just clear pavement without a hint of there having been over a foot of snow dumped on them the day before.
Every parking lot I passed contained piles of snow 10 feet high. All of my classmates made it to class, a spare few laughing about a stranger who had gotten their car stuck in the middle of the road before the plows came through. There were no exclamations of surprise, no joyous chorus about the beauty of the snow caked onto the sides of trees and weighing down evergreen branches, no anxieties about the state of potholes after the snow melts.
It was just a normal day—a day after a blizzard—and isn't there something lost in that?