Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Two Hundred Fourteen

Darkness and snow outside, white and gleaming under the streetlights. There are still flakes drifting through the air now, as there has been on and off for the last few days. The view from my window is a winter scene, tree branches and roofs white. The ground is white as well, though a few tufts of grass still show in places.

The snow started last week on a day that began crisp and clear, the air sharp in my lungs. The sun was bright and beckoning, despite the chill. Clouds moved in as the day wore on, grey and miserable. I walked to the library to return a book and an ill wind blew from the north. There were a few specks of snow on the air, a warning of what was to come.

Once I returned home it came in earnest, swirling and dancing in the wind. When it gusted the snow would suddenly be going sideways and I could almost imagine it not making its way to the ground. Flake by flake it did, each of them so small it seemed as though they couldn’t amount to anything. The ground was bare but wet for a time, holding strong against the incoming tide, but eventually it was overwhelmed turning a shining white. 

It has been cold too, well below freezing the last few days. As always seems to happen in this country, we have transitioned from warm to frigid without stopping anywhere in-between on our journey. I should be grateful it has taken until the middle of October for the first snow to arrive – most years we aren’t so lucky – but as always the arrival of winter leads to a certain brooding. This is what we will be living with for the next months – how many months is the only the question.

There will be warm days ahead, naturally, and this snow will likely vanish in a week or so. But it will be replaced. The darkness will grow and more cold and snow will come with it.