It’s strange looking out there right now, maybe even eerie. I keep looking again to make sure my eyes aren’t fooling me. The top of the neighbor’s magnolia tree is getting small touches of early sunlight, and those big, deep green leaves are holding snow. It’s beautiful, and I can’t stop turning to look again and again.
How could this week’s commentary be about anything but the weather? So often, the meteorologists in my part of the world hype of the incoming storm that turns out to be a big nothing-burger. I panic and put the family in the duck-and-cover position in the bathtub and nothing ends up happening. “Abundance of caution” they always say. This storm they got right. In fact, one of the TV weathermen kept saying the storm “outperformed” – that it did more than they predicted which is the opposite of what usually happens.
Mobile, Alabama officially received seven and a half inches of snow yesterday. What in many parts of the world would equate to a “so, what?” moment was a record-breaking snowfall in here, breaking a 130-year-old record. Yesterday I tended to the fire and kept turning to look. I had two client Zoom calls and both interrupted to ask if that was rain outside the window behind me. “No,” I said, “it’s snow, and we here in Mobile, Alabama hardly know how to behave.”
And we don’t. The roads were largely empty. It reminded me of the teeth of the pandemic when we all stayed home for days. My wife and I finally went outside late in the afternoon and walked down the middle of the busy street not far from our house. Our dog stepped outside and immediately turned around and dove back under the couch. She would have none of the snow, and the birdfeeder seemed extra active as little birds who live comfortably in our warm sub-tropical climate had to keep eating more and more to fuel themselves and stay warm.
I learned that being snowed-in lends itself to grazing all day long. Just a little snack here and there and then here again and maybe a little bit more of this and just one more bite of that. I had to make myself stop, and the temptation to open a thick, bold bottle of red wine was overwhelming. Had I made eye contact with a bottle of red-wine, I would have caved, but I maintained my Dry January discipline and had a couple of NA beers, instead.
I’ve read recently about savoring. Savoring is wanting to know something, to experience it. There is no time pressure to savoring, no pressure for more. No greed. Savoring is an attitude of spirit. It’s a life of spirit, and it’s the opposite of craving, which is an attitude of greed, control and sensation.
Yesterday’s snowfall and this morning’s sunrise is an experience I’ll savor. I’ll likely never see anything like this again here on the upper lip of the Gulf Coast. I’ll return to sitting here in my coffee chair and taking it in, as the magnolia tree is mottled with brilliant white and deep green and now ablaze with sun.
I’m Cam Marston, and I’m just trying to Keep it Real.
