missybgreen
- Jan 17, 2022
- 4 min read

SNOW!!!

So, any kind of snow is very rare in my town of Athens, Georgia. We are not in the mountains and we are South enough that the cold and the wet rarely come together. Yesterday, though, that magic happened. I have not always lived in a snow rare area. Most of my childhood was spent in Western Pennsylvania, where the winters gave us snow for several months straight. I never got into skiing or snow-boarding, but sledding and snowball fights were a necessity in the winter. We even had a long, wooden toboggan (the sled kind, not the hat kind) that fit five to six kids at a time.

Playing in the snow was fun, but my favorite snow memories were from when I was in high school. The house we lived in was surrounded by farms, including a fairly good size dairy farm up over the hill from us. There was a small wooded area between us with a path, so when we went over there, that was how we went. I ended up babysitting every Weekend for a family that lived in a house right beside the farm. I would walk over early in the morning, and winter was my absolute favorite time for that hike. The woods were always so peaceful, with snow outlining all the tree limbs and covering the ground. You could see and hear the birds as they woke up and greeted the day with cheerful chirps. Sometimes I would see rabbits or squirrels or deer as they made their way through the snow. If you have not guessed, being outside in nature is one of my favorite places.

One other quick story before I show you my photos from yesterday. We moved to Georgia when I was fifteen, in 1987. We literally had the truck and car packed and we went to my older sister's high school graduation, then walked out, got in our overstuffed car, and drove from Pennsylvania to Georgia. My sister and I cried the whole way, saying that we were going to return to the North as soon as possible and that we could not live without snow. Our last good snowfall in Pennsylvania had been a couple feet that fell in early Spring. Life had just gone on, nothing closed. It melted fairly quickly, too, if memory serves. When we were packing up the house, my parents informed us that where we were moving in Georgia did not get snow, so we had to leave the sleds behind. That did not make us happy.

We got to Georgia just in time for the heat of the summer. We also had a very large yard that needed to be mowed almost daily. The three of us kids spent the summer sweating as we mowed that lawn over and over and over. That winter, just to spite my parents I think, we ended up getting a six inch snow fall. We lived in Bowman at the time and far away, it seemed, from any sort of civilization. As the snow piled up and the world around us closed down, the three of us mostly regretted leaving behind that wonderful toboggan. We did not let that hinder us, though. We did have a few neighbors around our age and steep enough hill in the woods behind our house to sled down. Our neighbors had one of the round, plastic sleds, but going down just one at a time was not really fun. Well, my brother got inventive and turned a piece of roofing metal from our shed roof into a large sled. We had several good runs on the sleds after that, one person on the round sled, several on the metal sled and one standing at the top of the hill. It was my turn on the big sled with the neighbors and my brother's turn on the round sled. My sister stood at the top of the hill, watching. I went down first, with my brother flying down after me. Well, what we did not notice that the corners of the metal sled had uncurled and were sticking out. As my brother barreled past us on the other sled, the corner of the metal caught him in the leg, taking a nice big slice out of it. I had no idea what had happened, but my brother suddenly jumped up and took off towards the house. He ran straight past my sister and into the house to my mother. We quickly followed. Now, the car we drove at that time was an old mustang, manual transmission if I remember correctly. My mom, who was scared since he was bleeding and she was petrified that they would end up stuck in the show, ended up having to drive my brother through the snow (my Dad was at work) from Bowman to the hospital in Elberton where he got stitched up and put back together. Needless to say, that was end of us sledding, especially since by the time we had another snow fall like that, we were much older.

Back to the photos from yesterday, they are mostly just artsy photos, along with photos of my mother's church, Tuckston United Methodist, and my church, Covenant Presbyterian. I will end with a photo of my favorite of my feral cat colony, Tigger-Tiger. He is my sweetie, who loves to be petted and will grab at my arms and legs if he thinks he has not gotten enough pets. I hope you enjoy them.