As I was standing in 10 inches of snow outside of my apartment two days after a winter storm covered my home in southwest Virginia in a powdery white blanket, I was transported suddenly to my childhood and a rural Pennsylvania landscape 20 years ago also covered by a sea of white.
I can remember walking out my front door and toward the shadow of our 100-year-old barn and pretending I was walking out onto an alien planet where the white powder under my feet was the normal terrian, not just a temporary winter whitewash. Suddenly the crunch of the ice, the cold wind biting at my cheeks and the crinkling of my jacket were an adventure. Within my own imagination I turned the uncomfortable cold, slippery walk into a trek into another world. My dog, a gray German shepherd, trotted ahead, my companion on the outerspace outpost. I don't recall what we explorers were doing on that frigid, white planet, but suddenly the dark was brimming with excitement. The trees I had played beneath and hung from throughout my childhood were suddenly foreign spectacles to examine. And my house became a space station, the lights spilling onto the snow the only piece of civilization within the wilderness and the unknown that spread out in every direction.
That brief flashback of another time and another place reminded me of when I was capable of finding entertainment wherever I was and whatever I was doing. When did I lose that desire to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation and instead see only the miserable bits of life? Today, I felt the cold and how it stung at my face. I felt my nerves become frayed as my dogs pulled at their leashes as they tried to wrestle one another in the drifts. And I was contemplating not aliens behind the trees, but how long I would have to stand here and allow my daughter to play in the snow until I could convince her it's time to go back in without accompanying tears. All the wonder of winter was erased within me.
Maybe that's the allure of home. It stands as a reminder of a time when all was possible and my whole life still lay before me overflowing with possiblities -- my life's path still unchosen with the time to allow myself to escape into worlds of wonder every now and then. I don't know for sure how to get back to find that kind of effortless joy in everyday things. But for now, it's nice to remember how differently I looked at the world as a child, and that in itself was a moment of escape.
