An expectation of the unknown?

A sense of expectation floats in the air. A foreboding of the unknown. The air is electric, overhung by the pall of something about to happen. Whenever two Indians in this foreign corner met today, there were the same hushed discussions, the same gossip about the same big thing. Tomorrow was going to be a special day. For most of us, it was going to be the day we were to experience the first snow fall of our lives. The fall colors had arrived with a splash and are now almost gone, fading away into hibernation. Most trees were fast defoliating, the grass covered by a thick crinkly blanket of leaves, the detritus of a splendid show of natural beauty. A son e lumiere show put on expressly for our delight. But as Paul Douglas of The Start Tribune says “A Minnesota optimist is defined as anyone who owns a convertible (or swimming pool)”.

The romantic phrase ‘Falling snow’ sounds like the name of an Ojibwe maiden, the natives of the country of Minnesota. The brave warrior subjects of the Ojibwe nation huddling round a raging bonfire, cozy in their deer skins and reindeer and mink furs, smoking the peace pipe and contemplating the blinding whiteness of the virgin snow.

Falling snow has had an enchanting sound for me since my childhood. All those wonderful activities which characters in novels and movies did were just a daydream for me. The White Christmas, ice skating on rinks, skiing down mountain slopes like James Bond, ice fishing by drilling a hole through frozen lakes, dressing up like eskimoes, looking through a microscope at the miraculous geometrical and fractral structure of the snowflake, cheering your favourite ice hockey team as it catapults the puck into the goal, sledding and tobogganing down riverside slopes, seeing the flocks of birds migrate away in V shaped formations, building a snowman and having fights with snowballs……The list goes on and on. In that way, it is really exciting to be here. An adventure in snow country. So, will I wake up to a white day tomorrow?

[Written at 3 :00 AM while sipping on a mug of boiling hot cocoa on a short break from doing homework]