let it snow

I've been craving a good snow fall lately--not a piddly dusting, but a bona fide 7-to-8-inch-get-out-the-snow-shovels-and-hot-cocoa kind of snow that shocks you awake when you peek between the blinds in the morning. A few weeks ago I came across this quote from Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter:

A wet snow comes in the night and covers the ground and clings to the trees, making the whole world white. For a while in the morning the world is perfect and beautiful. You think you will never forget.
You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind.

I don't know how many times I've woken to a feathery comforter of snow, but I can never quite get the picture clear in my head of those beautiful mornings. I know part of my propensity to take pictures stems from this lack of clarity. I remember furiously taking pictures of a particular glen in Scotland as the fog lifted, revealing green tufts springing through the gray monotony. To no avail. I try hard to recall the scenery, the angle of the hill, the smell of the dense, earthy air, but memory fails. Even looking at my photographs doesn't do justice; they don't feel authentic somehow.

The feeling of those snow-covered dawns lingers inside, and I want to relive that moment, bask in the radiant morning, knowing full well my mental picture will eventually fade despite my efforts to remember it exactly. It makes me wonder if our capacity for remembering beautiful scenes will improve when we are glorified and made whole. I hope so.