Snow, glorious snow! Savoring the timeless delight.

You’re 8 years old, and your day is about to be made. As soon as your eyes pop open, you can tell the light is different. And then you see the fat flakes falling at the window, and the little radio in the kitchen is already tuned to the school closures, and the world is transformed. Yes!

Nothing is going to pull the reins back on this much joy, and no one will even try. Your mom will stuff you into your snowsuit, and you’ll be outside until your socks slush up. You’ll come back in for hot cocoa and press your feet against the heat register until they itch.

It’s still a beautiful thing every time, the snow, as though every fret and flaw has been forgiven, and replaced by an exuberance of bird tracks. You go outside for the sheer crunch of it and for the memory of the snow day. How you feel about it depends on your circumstance. It depends on whether you have a wooden toboggan and a ready supply of gravity, or whether the outhouse is all the way out in the windbreak. It depends on whether you work from home, or you’re past your due date.

We don’t get a lot of snow here in Oregon. We get a lot of rain, and sometimes the temperature toggles around either side of freezing, and then we get confused rain. We get a layered casserole with every possible state of water, including something like sherbet in the middle, and if your circumstance is such that you have to drive, your beautiful snow day has an anxious edge to it.

My circumstance for several decades was that I had to deliver mail no matter what. Which would have been thrilling in the snow, if I could just walk out of the station, but I had to drive. On steep, narrow lanes. Occasionally sliding sideways. The kids would be out of school and sledding in the street, and they’d see me perched at the top of the block and begrudgingly step back until I had a mitten’s worth of space on either side of my vehicle, and I would stand on my brake, lean out the window, and bellow at them in a voice that would drop an exorcist.

“Get over! MOVE! On the sidewalk! ALL THE WAY!! I’m not moving till you do! I’m TELLING YOUR MOM!” The kids saw me only on snow days, and their opinion about me was very different from their parents’. The parents thought I was as sweet as pie, but it’s the kids who have grown up and are running the show now, and this is why everyone pays bills online and the post office is in trouble.

There was once a prominent citizen in town whose videoed trip down an icy block in his Mercedes became an internet sensation. It was a steep one-way street, and he slowly mashed into every single parked car on the left until there was a gap, and then he pinballed into every single parked car on the right, and then he caught the lucky flipper at the bottom of the street and spun into all the remaining bumpers, and the phones of insurance agents all over town began lighting up and ringing simultaneously, ding-ding-ding, and that street, ladies and gentlemen, was on my mail route.

Sixty years ago, snow days were a surprise. We’re too advanced for that rare delight now, for the most part. But awhile back, we got our predicted 3 inches of snow, right on time, and then we got 6 more inches after that, and every knob and twig was soft and plump and perfect. And I did not have to deliver mail, anywhere. I did not even have to go anywhere. This beautiful snowfall was all the more beautiful for me not being a mail carrier in it.

And so I went for a walk, with my inner 8-year-old tagging along. A little voluntary walk in the snow, while not delivering mail. A walk in which I observed people delivering mail, although I, myself, was not so doing. And I filled up the bird feeders and rigged up a heater for the birdbath while continuing to not deliver mail, and I had myself a cocoa while at the very same time not delivering mail, and, my friends, it was a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.