"Snow" Back Thursday

One of the most popular posts on Facebook is Throwback Thursday. People usually post photos taken in their younger years, which is a fun way of creating an online gallery of their lives. In honor of the Snow Blizzard that bore down on my home state of New York this week, I thought I thought I’d share some “snow” back memories from my years growing up in the Empire State. 

I spent the first six years of my life in a very small town (maybe 300 people) one mile from the Canadian border in upper New York State.  Winter was always a challenging time for my family, but as a kid I enjoyed it thoroughly. Even in the winter I loved to play with my cousins on my grandparents’ front porch. The snow dripping from the roof onto the porch overhang would refreeze at night and produce amazing stalactite and stalagmite icicles as big as six inches around and three or four feet long. We would break off a length of ice to hold in our mittens to suck on and sometimes to use as a sword. We totally ignored the taste of roof soot in our Popsicle.

The annual Sugar Social at the Methodist Church was a much anticipated event. In March when the maple sap was rising in the trees, it was collected in buckets, then boiled down to make thick syrup. Fresh snow was gathered in big metal pans and the syrup was poured on the snow instantly making maple syrup taffy—a delicious treat. 

I fought many battles from the snow forts I helped to construct. A mound of snowballs was stored for the inevitable snowball fight that would follow. It was mostly the boys against the girls and sometimes I was on the winning side.

I moved away from that rural lifestyle and eventually ended up in Georgia where snow is an exception and not the rule. One winter I returned to the place of my birth to visit my father who was very sick with cancer. The closest airport to my small town was several hours away, so my sister and I had to drive on icy roads to reach our destination. Snow drifts covered all the surrounding farmland as far as my eye could see. The full moon rose over the horizon and cast an ethereal glow on the snow laden fields. It was a beautiful sight and a much needed reminder of God’s beauty in the midst of human suffering.

Here’s hoping for snow this year in Georgia—enough to shut down the roads for a few days, but not enough to affect the power lines. The world will stop and peace and quiet will prevail until the temperature rises again. 

A Bible verse about snow:  Isaiah 55:10-11 "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”