This morning Nigella and I braved the snow drifts and the even taller snow plow mounds and went for a much needed walk downtown. It might have been a distant country lane for all the life we saw. A few brave (or foolish) souls crept down the main roads in underused four wheel drives. A couple plodded by on cross country skis, a handful of people were out walking stir crazy dogs like me.
It was absolutely quiet. Our normally bustling downtown mall, a pedestrian haven, should be full of last minute shoppers, movie goers, diners picking up a pint of Revolutionary soup or a stack of dumplings or having a lazy sit down lunch. And it wouldn't take long before the clamor of downtown life began again. In fact, by the time I rounded the corner near our house there were already signs of people stirring from their homes, clearing off their cars, digging out their stoops, beginning to clear away the almost blizzard of 2009.
By the time I made an early afternoon trek back into downtown for some milk, non four wheel drive cars were swooping by on the mostly cleared roads and the small market was full of shoppers. The peace of the morning had gone. It's a good thing. The stranded motorists in hotels all over town and the holiday travellers and my parents who are, at this moment, driving from Missouri to spend Christmas with us will be happy that the snow is already starting to fade from the roads and sidewalks. But the utter quiet that the snow brought was nice too. If you had no where to go other than a stroll up the road with your dog or a trek into the yard to make snowmen, it was nothing short of perfect, especially when it comes in such small doses.