Frozen Polaroids

It’s been weirdly warm here for the past few days—maybe it’s not so weird anymore, spring in February, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Today I took a walk up the hill and saw a crocus trying to peek out of a muddy pile of leaves. The little bits of color and sunshine are a nice break from the grey-on-grey-on-grey days, but even so, I hope winter sticks around just a little longer. A good buddy of mine once said the cold makes him feel alive and I hafta agree. He’s a Mainer now, likely freezing and fully and truly alive. All those sticky summers in Louisville must’ve nearly killed him.

We’ve only had one actual snow here this year, a few weeks back. I was bummed I had to postpone a trip I’d been real excited about, but I still wasn’t mad at the snow. I’m always rooting for it, like when I was a kid. Me and Dan live not too far from a park with a lot of good hills, so we walked there with our neighbors and sleds. It was 19 degrees, but we didn’t mind, the flasks and thermoses of coffee kept us warm.  

My pal Jesse Paris Smith recently wrote on her Substack about the transformative magic of snow and it got me thinking about my own times sneaking out before everyone else, making the first footprints in it. I dug out some Polaroids I took around Louisville on various snow days over the years. Sometimes I’d venture out alone and sometimes with a cold-tolerant friend. I remember one walk in particular where everything was encased in a thick layer of ice like something out of Narnia. The streets were deserted, and it was so quiet except for the ice crunching under my feet and occasional big chunks falling from the trees onto the street or unlucky parked cars. Once in a while a transformer on the power lines would explode in the distance like the shortest fireworks celebration ever. Thinking about it now, I’m realizing that maybe I shouldn’t have been outside, but it was downright magical. It was so cold my numb fingers could barely unfold my rickety camera and I had to put the Polaroids inside my coat to get them warm enough to fully develop.