There’s a storm moving in on northeastern PA this evening and they’re calling for snow, sleet, freezing rain – pretty much the whole works, except for the plague of locusts (which, in my mind, was always the most interesting of the doomsday conditions).  So with the prospect of a snow day tomorrow, which means extra time in bed, lounging around in sweats with coffee all afternoon, and likely injuring my back clearing the sidewalk, it made me think back to another snowstorm.

Back when I lived in Binghamton, NY, we got hit with one of those late-season storms, that came in the early morning hours a couple of days into April.  It dumped over a foot of heavy, very wet snow over the course of the morning – the kind of snow that has folks out raking their roofs with manic determination, while next door snowblowers cough and clog because it’s just so damn dense.

And I was the nut who took to the roads and drove across town to the county park I frequented, because I knew that in that final waning hour, the scene would be worth it.

It was.  It was worth slamming my Jeep into 4-wheel drive and tackling the side roads.  It was worth parking in 18″ of unplowed snow and risking being stuck there.  It was worth sludging through said snow until I reached the pond.  Bundled up like Nanook, camera in one hand and a golf umbrella in the other (to protect the camera from the small, icy flakes that were still coming down), I was one moment trying to take flight with a gust of wind, and the next bogged down in a drift.

This was the final shot I took before trudging back to my car.  I don’t know what f-stop it was, or what shutter speed.  All I know is that it was one of those shots where I knew, as soon as I took it, that it was the one I had come out for.  I knew that it had captured the moment just the way I was experiencing it.

It was a world turned monochrome, nearly B&W except for the subtle blue cast.  And amid the cold I remember thinking that it would have been nice to just flop down in the snow and be part of it for a while.  But as I recall, my pants were soaked and starting to freeze and I had a deep longing for a cup of coffee, that finally sent my back to the car and on my way home.

Since then, this has become one of my favorite photos, and I still pull it up from time to time so I can remember what it felt like to be there.