Natural Power

While I’m no longer in school, nor officially associated with any school, government, or other institutional schedule, today was a snow day. What little weather precipitated yesterday in the Northern Shenandoah Valley managed to suddenly render a vacation day for nearly everyone in the region. I worked on Tuesday when the weather was ongoing, and while the roads were really quite fine, we had practically no customers. The one wine sale and three lunch tables hardly made it worth unlocking the doors and turning on the lights. I’m not surprised. This happens roughly twice every winter. No one prepares for winter weather since it is so infrequent (despite the cold temperatures) and the radio and online reports confirm everyone’s impulses to take the day off and stay at home. Assuming today’s sales would align with yesterday’s, our manager left me a message this morning telling me to take the day off and that only she and the chef would come in today.

Thank God. The unplanned day off is truly a divine gift; and, in typical fashion of such days, I proceeded to accomplish three or four things off the home to do list before deciding to plop myself in front of the television to watch my recent Netflix movie while surfing Facebook and picking out a cool recipe for tonight’s dinner. Not-so-suddenly (nor surprisingly) my newfound day for progress became my relabeled day for relaxation and moderate laziness. I still intended to accomplish a few things in the day, but their urgency fell from the ER to the free clinic in no time at all.

When eventually the movie was over and sitting was no longer comfortable, I decided to actually leave the house to unload the nine bags of wood pellets in my car I purchased the day before. This seemly dull exercise opened me up to an awesome experience—however brief.

It was late afternoon and the air had warmed enough that the snow and ice which had blanketed the area was now melting. As I looked west, the golden sunlight glared brightly over the blue mountains and with its rays blew a strong warm humid wind. Looking back east, a gust of wind hit a round dune of snow, thrusting a gathering of unmelted snowflakes into the air and into the tall brown grass. It was a surreal moment. Here in the end of January in the mountains, I felts as though I were teleported to a cool day at the beach. The shear natural power of that minute filled me with a certain energy whose level is like the excitement of discovering some hidden potential or the first few seconds of a new relationship. I was suddenly beaming.

My nature-given stamina yielded amazing results. In the next hour, while the sun set, I crossed off more items on my to do list than I had since I got up this morning. Last on my list for the evening was a quick trip to the grocery store before settling in to make my dinner, do a little reading, and write tomorrow’s lists.

By the time I excited the supermarket, the sun had completely set and it was dark. When the sun left, it took with it the warmth in the air; but the wind kept on, pushing harder, draining up the energy it earlier created. I walked across the pavement to my car and was startled by an aluminum can behind me, violently pushed against the bottom of the store wall. I turned around and saw this harsh wind was littering all around. Plastic bags, cigarette butts, and other trash skated across the parking lot like a clumsy overweight shoved onto a muddy dance-floor. I retreated to my car and headed home, hoping for a comfortable haven in my planned meal and fireplace.