By Diana Hooley

I’m waiting for the first snow to fall—and I’m not alone. Of all the different weather phenomena, what is it about snow that causes us to look forward to it with such excitement? Maybe it’s because snow signals the beginning of the winter holiday season. A cranky old farmer friend tried to dampen my enthusiasm on that score.

He said, “Don’t get your hopes up for snow on Christmas. I remember a Christmas back in the ‘60s when the temperature was sixty. It was so warm outside we walked around in our shirtsleeves.”

Especially in the era of climate change I’ve become increasingly worried about the amount of snow we’ll get each year, particularly where I live in southern Idaho. Our average snow accumulation is just twenty inches. The state as a whole averages 186 inches, and Island Park in eastern Idaho records as much as 219 inches. All that snow is put to good use.

The snowpack supports animal and plant dormancy and helps kill opportunistic bugs and curb plant disease. Snowmelt in the spring replenishes our reservoirs and feeds the agricultural lifeblood of Idaho, the Snake River.

Snow holds a fascination for me beyond its winter holiday significance and the good it does for our environment. Consider how selective snow is. Sunshine and rain happen almost everywhere, but places like Florida and the African continent rarely see snow. Snow often surprises us. Spring unfurls its green slowly, and autumn inches towards gold and red. The white of winter usually begins suddenly, when someone points out their window at fluttering flakes and asks, “Is that snow?”

The most beautiful snow I ever experienced was on the high prairie of Fairfield. My husband and I wanted to get out of the house one winter day and drove up to Fairfield to spend the night at a cute mom and pop motel. In the lobby, trophy heads of wild game and a big bearskin hung on the wall. Outside the motel, it was snowing steadily.

I sat by the lobby woodstove and sipped a cup of the hot cocoa the motel offered their guests. When the sky darkened to evening, my husband and I went to our room. At about three in the morning, light filtering though the curtains woke me up. I pulled the curtains apart and gasped at the view outside. Under a full moon a pristine snowfield glittered like a thousand diamonds.

The next day we went for a walk along a mostly deserted road. The sun shone brightly after the storm, and the opalescent snowfield from the night before was now blinding in the daylight. A power line followed the road. The poles with their cross-beams stood like dark sentinels in this white landscape. I noticed how the cables strung between the poles sagged under a layer of snow.

When I pounded one of the poles with my mitten-covered hands, the snow fell from the cables, dimpling the smooth, white surface below in interesting patterns.

I’m still hoping for snow on Christmas, despite my farmer friend’s predictions. Christmas snow is the best snow. It looks great behind the colored lights on eaves, and it’s usually a colder, firmer snow. You can glide across it on a sled or the hood of an old car. We did that once, my husband driving the pickup and pulling our kids on a car hood over the snowy alfalfa field next to our house.

The way the snow falls this time of year is beautiful, too. It comes down either gently, like a hesitant hope for peace on earth, or as a blizzard ready to sweep away the old and usher in the new.