Snow Days

The snow has melted now. It started its descent on Thursday at 2:00, and we were set free to enjoy it (um, I mean, to enhance our chances of getting home safely) at 3:00. After being stuck on Chapman Highway for two and a half hours with all the other South Knoxvillians attempting to evacuate downtown, the rest of the weekend has been peaceful.

To be truthful, Chapman Highway wasn’t all that bad either. Sitting still for hours with hundreds of cars frustrated grunts and sighs out of us, but the snowfall outside the windows was still nice. The air held so much white that we couldn’t see the buildings downtown once we reached the James White Parkway Bridge. Fog does that in the mornings sometimes, but the snow, a relative rarity, made the disappearance magic. A funnel formed around us and whisked us through to the other side. Soon after, we were gridlocked, but even among the billboards and strip malls, I exclaimed the beauty. I’m sure David got tired of that, but in just one hour my little Knoxville had become one of those nestled towns, you know, in the hills near some resort where people pay to fall down a mountain with sticks on their feet. I wanted so much to find Mr. Tumnus bumbling along with his books, but I saw no hoof prints in the snow, only tire tracks and every now and then a foot trail left by one of my fellow drivers, gone AWOL from their spot in the jam.

We got home at 5:30 (15 minutes earlier than we would have on any other work day). David grabbed the digital camera and got some pictures while I turned on the fireplace and started to make dinner. We talked about making a snowman the next day, if it ended up being a snow day as well. It did. We didn’t. Instead, we just stayed cozy inside our cottage, and burrowed all weekend. It was a normal weekend for us, except for the white outside the windows. I looked out each morning and exclaimed, “It’s so bright. I love it.”