The Cold War
Last winter, it snowed in [name of town deleted], Oklahoma for the first time that I personally can remember.
Typically, winter around my house consists of dead, decaying leaves lying piled under naked trees and knee-deep mud. The clingy, red clay mud that always follows you into the house when you're not looking, even if you leave your shoes out on the porch.
You see, around here it almost never gets cold enough to actually snow, and when it does there's never a single drop of moisture to be found in the air. And whenever there
is enough humidity, the thermometer mercury insists on hovering right at 37 degrees Fahrenheit or thereabouts, and all we ever get out of it is rain. Constant, hammering, undying rain all winter. To quote my dad, "It's gonna rain right up until the first day of the drought." Sometimes it gets so bad, you almost can't stand the thought of taking a shower. The few brave snowflakes that occassionally
do get up the nerve to form and fall don't stand---well, a snowball's chance in Hades of surviving in the rain-soaked dooryards and back fields that, by now, we can't remember having ever been any other way.
But last year, a sequence of events that I have come to expect, over the past twenty-two years, simply did not occur.
One day, it began to snow. I didn't really think anything of it at first; I'm used to seeing as much as half an inch develop before the mud puddles can marshal their resources and melt the tiny crystalline rebels into a more easily assimilated form. After three or four hours of valiant efforts, the snowflakes finally threw in the towel and called a halt to the invasion. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I'd seen it happen too many times before. This time though, things didn't go exactly as planned. I glanced around the perimeter of the yard, noticing that the first wave had proven to be almost too much for the mud to handle. The puddles were no longer strictly
puddles, but hollow depressions filled with a dirty brown slush that vaguely resembled frozen chocolate soda. I was rather impressed at the effort put forth by the snow, but still didn't expect anything to come of it. Though I didn't know it yet, I was soon to be proven quite wrong.
After twilight fell, the temperature dropped a few degrees, and that night the snowflakes were able to launch a sneak attack in the darkness. When I woke in the morning, it was to find that the snowflakes had gained almost three inches over the mud's encampments, burying the red clay in millions of their own miniscule fallen bodies, leaving their victory flags to sparkle weakly in the water-colored sunlight. Tiny icicles hung precariously from twigs, mocking the long-dead green leaves with brilliant pinpoint sparkles and miniature rainbows that were captured in snowflake prisms, shattered and then released as a million more sparkles, pastel-colored points of light on a glittering white background. The effect was brave, beautiful and utterly pathetic. I truly did not expect the snow to last even until noon.
And once again, I was wrong.
By 1 PM that afternoon, the sun
had taken it upon itself to free the mud, having deserted the snowflakes and their artistic endeavors several hours ago. Many snowflakes were lost in the ensuing battle, but there were also many who survived, seeking refuge in shade and under shadows, biding their time until the temperature dropped once more.
By 5 PM, cloud cover had returned, swiftly incapacitating the traitor sunlight and bringing thermometers back down to a more hospitable level. An hour later, reinforcements began to arrive, eager to avenge their melted comrades. The ground lost earlier in the day was almost immediately regained, and this time the invasion didn't stop for almost three full days.
By the end of the war the entire world, or as much of it as I could see, had been conquered. I sat on the porch and looked out over an eerily still, utterly beautiful black, white and ice-blue frozen sculpture that was once my backyard. They had won.
I hugged my knees to my chest and grinned, watching my frozen breath as it ventured out into this new, frozen, totally silent world. The snowflakes had finally won.
I hope they win again.