This first dose of winter caught me by surprise. It shouldn’t have. The first real snow at my house over a period of about 35 years is usually Oct. 7. I don’t keep great records on it, but that seems to be the most common date, with strange years with snow on Labor Day and other years with bare ground at Thanksgiving. But if you had to bet, the first snow would be the 7th. Defining what is the “first snow” is not a simple as it appears. Sleet doesn’t count, nor does snow that doesn’t stick. So it has to be enough to matter, but not necessarily enough to plow. But it doesn’t count if you aren’t leaving footprints in it. There was enough last week to count as the first snow, and then early this week, there was enough that I briefly considered plowing.
Plowing the early storms is always risky. The ground isn’t frozen, and in my world, it also isn’t paved. So there’s a delicate balance between letting the big snowblower on the back of the tractor hang just above the ground, or having its skids sink into the mud, and then the snow blower becomes a gravel blower. That lasts for a few minutes before the sheer pins break, and then it becomes a worthless hunk of metal plugged up with ice-encrusted gravel and a most unpleasant job to repair. I decided that it hadn’t really accumulated that much on the roads, and let it go. That seemed to be the right call.
This has been a summer of constant chaos on the ranch. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, sometimes spectacularly wrong. The only thing missing was a forest fire, and the woods are still full of deer hunters, so it’s not completely off the list. The back-ordered parts for the irrigation system arrived last week. That was actually a rare success in an otherwise dismal year. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if they had arrived on schedule in July — the water was already gone. The coming of winter is always exciting with the ski season ahead and the anticipation of all that brings. This year, getting the ranch put to bed with a blanket of snow feels like closing the door on a year that doesn’t need to be repeated or remembered. Other than plowing the place open, winter is pretty slow here. Unlike cattle, snow stays where you put it instead of finding a gate somebody left open and running out into the highway in the middle of the night.
The dogs’ reactions to the first snow were interesting. I don’t know what they do and don’t remember. They haven’t seen snow since last spring. When they got me out of bed to go outside in the morning, there was a big pile of snow at the top of the stairs from the deck. The roof had been shedding snow all night, and it was piled up enough to present a challenge to get over. They paused for just a second to think about it, and then climbed over it like it had been there forever to go about their business. There was no appreciation of the contrast of the snow with the leaves still on the trees, or the way the snow was clinging to the railings and fence wires. The dogs didn’t care, but I stood there shivering on the deck, bare feet in a little snow, soaking in the sunrise and the beauty of the snow. The eagles will be showing up soon, always on the same dead branch in the cottonwood tree. I’m always surprised at how different each storm is, what it sticks to and what it slides off, and the weird textures poking through.
Once the dogs got downstairs to the yard, they both stuck their noses in the snow and plowed furrows in it. I assume snow smells like snow. But the dogs were plowing for something. I finally got cold and went back in the house. They ran laps around the yard, noses buried in the snow. Their first foray outside in the morning is usually pretty quick, then back in the house for a little more snoozing. No breakfast before daylight seems to be their rule. The morning with the snow, they stayed out and played for a half hour or so before wanting to come back in, with big snowballs stuck in their fur.
Nobody knows that the winter will be like. The drought was so persistent through the summer that it seems likely to hang on, but then there were those huge rains in August, and this snow cycle that has been pretty substantial. Maybe things will revert to something approximating normal. Or maybe we will get a few big blasts of storm separated by weeks of dry weather. My usual hornet nest prognostication is a failure this year because there are no hornet nests. The August rains washed them out of the trees. We’re left to rely on actual science, and we all know how useless that is when it comes to weather forecasts.
But I’m ready for it, whatever it is.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.