Of Gentle Snow and Being Rich

Everyone expected, and with good reason, to wake up to the sight of the Three Tetons towering over our house, just outside the bedroom window. Instead, we woke up to giant snowflakes, falling gently, and four inches of white already decorating the railing of the deck.

Yellowstone, which had been just within our grasp, now might as well have been in far Siberia. The recorded road report on the phone confirmed this: Road after road after snow-clogged road—CLOSED. Will not open until Summer 2010. Something about that word, Two Thousand Ten, seemed so incredibly far in the future. I guess that’s how it is when you are a nostalgia buff. You relive the past a lot. It still does not seem like 2009, even as it prepares to come to a sliding stop among the powdery snows of another early winter.

So the snow was falling when I rolled over in our log bed and turned to gaze out the window beyond the deck, which is also made of logs. It was one of those friendly snows, friendly in more ways than one. First, because it was falling so gently, it was friendly to us, friendly to any brave soul out walking or riding, or whatever those brave souls do who love the winter. Second, friendly to skiers and snowboarders, I’m sure, although those two pursuits were the farthest things from my mind then and now. And third, the snowflakes were friendly to each other, it seemed, for it appeared that forty or fifty of them had joined hands and were coming down with the illusion of gargantuan flakes the size of cotton balls. They came with a flutter, unable to fall straight because of their strange, flat shapes, caught in and affected by the slightest shift of air. They eased down onto their comrades who had already come to rest, settling gently to leave plenty of air cushion in between. What appeared to be four inches of moisture was in reality probably more like an eighth of an inch, had it been rain.

I am put in mind of a similar circumstance, when I was traveling alone on a train from Geneva, Switzerland to Innsbruck, Austria. That time it was the magnificent Matterhorn I was looking forward to, a mountain which I believed they might have modeled the Grinch’s mountain after in the cartoon movie. In Geneva the weather had been gorgeous, the sun shining, the city aglow in the light of late November. But the day I got up to catch the train the clouds had slunk down over the Alps, everything lay in shades of gray and muted greens and yellows. As the train clacked on past at the top of the rise, I only knew the Matterhorn was there because like today, with the Tetons, I could feel this incredible presence, the sense that something huge and powerful and important is looming there, just within your grasp, but invisible. I rode on past the Matterhorn that day, and the only Matterhorn I will probably ever see is the Disneyland ride. The next day broke crisp and incredibly clear, incidentally, and the brilliant colored homes and shops of Innsbruck will be forever etched in my memory, there against the stark blue sky.

Now, here in this cedar home, with the world of gray outside and the chill that creeps in through every crack, only to be battled back by the fire in the fireplace, I am taken back to my childhood. There, in a place called Bear Canyon, my first vivid memories begin. The sun came up around noon in the winter, and it disappeared behind the spruce and fir forest sometime close to three o’clock, thanks to the confines of the canyon and its steep, forested sides. Since we moved away from there before I was old enough for school, my memories of that cabin in the woods of western Montana are all good, all made before young children are forced out into the cold to go to school, when your nostrils stick together, and it’s so cold it hurts to breathe. My memories were of building snowmen with Mom, lying on the sofa in front of a crackling fire, with a homemade afghan wrapped around me. Of watching Dad and the other kids come in after a long day, stomping their feet, complaining of the cold, while in my secure little world the cold affected me only if I invited it.

I remember heating water in a huge kettle—or what seemed huge back then—on top of the wood stove so we could have that weekly bath on Saturday nights. I remember hot chicken and dumplings, fresh venison cooked just right, in the early morning hours before daylight, when the house was normally haunted only by my early rising daddy, until his “little buddy” crept out of the covers for a bite. I think it was there, in those formative years, when I gained my love of fresh deer meat, which will always and forever be my choice of meats, just as it is for my own children.

The sun exploded onto the snow field behind the cabin once today, as I remember it doing all those years ago. I can’t help but compare it to a field of diamonds, because cliché or not that is indeed what it seemed to be. Especially when it was cold outside, as Bozeman, Montana, can get—very, VERY cold. Those coldest snowflakes seemed to rest on the surface of the snow field, more like huge flakes of frost than like actual snow, and when the sun would hit them at a glancing angle, they shone fiercely, boldly, and only disappeared when a child thought he could go out and pick them up and be rich.

But what is rich, after all? Is it money, a huge home, fancy cars and computers and big screen TV’s? Or is rich a cozy little house in a canyon in the mountains, a little home nestled below Mount Ellis, where the deer, the elk and moose, and the black bear roamed freely? Is rich being alone with a mother who loves you, wrapped in a blanket, reading a good book, or listening to the music of The Sons of the Pioneers, Marty Robbins or the Carpenters? Does being rich mean a huge hug from your daddy after he’s been gone for an eternity—or at least eight hours—away from his little buddy? Everyone has their own idea of rich, and I guess there are different kinds of rich.

Even as I type this, my beautiful wife lies here beside me napping from her morning’s labors, my belly is full from a big breakfast of pancakes and homemade huckleberry syrup, made from fruit we picked ourselves—as a family. I have a fine memory of the scent of bacon and eggs and pancakes wafting through the house. We are healthy, my kids are happy, and a copy of the Good Book rests here on the bed post above my head. Outside, the world could not be prettier. Although I am an autumn person, and I was not ready for snow, it is so beautiful I can’t be sad. And I swear to you, I am richer than a hundred sheiks. God is glorious, and so is life at the base of the Teton Range. Only the western Montana of the 1960’s could bring me closer to Heaven.