Long Island Snow Storm
March 2, 2009
Long Island doesn't get a lot of snow like this, but every 3 or 4 years we'll get a good snow storm that just stops everything. This one dumped 14 inches on us and really messed things up. The roads were terrible, kids got the day off from school, and many businesses closed.
There's nothing like a good snow. Yes, it cancels plans, causes accidents, and can be a major inconvenience, but the beauty, wonder and excitement a good storm brings makes me feel like a kid again.
Emerson described the feeling best in his poem "The Snow-Storm."
Here is the complete poem along with some pictures sent to me by friends across Long Island:
The Snow-Storm
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Announced by all the
trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the
fields,
Seems nowhere to alight:
A snow covered street. Photo and © Barbara Levy, author of Life Around Levittown.
The whited
air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the
heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
I love the waffle pattern... Photo and © by photographer Alida Thorpe.
The sled and traveler
stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates
sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
5:19AM: This is the first thing I saw when I got up the morning of the storm.
Come see the north wind's
masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected
roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Do you see the irony here?
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his
wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares
he
For number or proportion.
Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian
wreaths;
The wind blew these icicles sideways as they were forming.
A swan-like form invests the hidden
thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall
to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the
gate
A tapering turret overtops the
work.
Secatogue Avenue in Farmingdale, Long Island. Sand spread across this road gives it a
rustic, almost farm like feel. Photo and © Diana Faria of Long Island Daily
Photo.
And when his hours are
numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished
Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by
stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's
night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
I love that last line "The frolic architecture of the snow."
On with more pictures...
A lot of Long Islanders where doing this...
And a lot of birds were doing this.
I went for a drive.
A family out enjoying the snow. Photo and © Alida Thorpe.
So there you have it. A poem and pictures of a late winter snow storm on Long Island.
Special thanks to Alida Thorpe, Diana Faria, and Barbara Levy for sharing their photos with me.
If you have a photo of this storm that you'd like to see here, contact me and I'll consider it. For all other submissions go here.
