Ruminations on snowy weekends

DC’s third snowstorm in ten days only dropped a trace amount of snow last night so federal offices opened again after a two-hour delay. Walking anywhere by navigating alongside moving traffic, because many sidewalks along arterial roads are not shoveled, is still tricky. The temperature has hovered around freezing since the first storm so no melting is going on.

The city was filled with huge construction equipment working over the weekend. Tracked earth movers filled dump trucks with frozen blocks of snow from snow piles on every street corner for removal, improving sight lines immensely and helping finding parking. Whenever a heavy piece of equipment clanked on down to the next corner, its tracks scuffed and scarred the streets and tore up asphalt patches in the roadway. This is a series of storms that will keep us paying for street paving well into next summer.

Around my house I have been able to observe the use of my yard from trails in the snow across it, which is interesting. There is a feral cat that lives in the open space behind my fence line (the W&OD Trail) and he uses my yard a lot for concealment during the day. He leaves tell-tale tracks going across the undisturbed snow in my back yard each morning. I have also discovered that a group of boys regularly vaults my anchor fence and uses my side yard to get from the street to the open space and back again, which is okay. After all, I was a boy once too.

There’s no warm-up in the foreseeable future, so the snowy conditions are going to be here for awhile, apparently. I have a sibling who lives in the Twin Cities who would feel right at home at my house.