SNOW COUNTRY

It seems we live on the southern cusp of yukiguni (snow country), where the winter sidewalks are basically tunnels through the snow, though it never gets that bad down here. Some mornings, though, I get on the train from our blinding blizzard, go through a tunnel or two and the sky is blue, the sun is shining, birds are practically singing, butterflies...it's like Dorothy going from Kansas to Oz, only as an older guy with jeans on and no dog. It's another world. Then when I return, a tunnel or two from the sunny blue I click my bootheels twice and I'm back in the howling black and white again. There's no place like home. To me it's all just as miraculous as it sounds, but none of the locals seem to remark upon it. I guess in the right place even miracles can become quotidian. Some winters yukiguni comes right down and covers us all with a meter or two of pure white weather; other winters the line is drawn farther north, and the weather is rather mild here. The first winter we innocents were here, in the fall there was a plague of kamemushi (Halyomorpha picus; "stinkbug" (note to future innocents: do not allow stinkbugs in your salad) ) and the locals said therefore the winter would be severe. Sure enough, right around christmas we got 80 cm in one night, and soon after we were isolated by meters of snow for most of the winter, had to walk up the mountain pulling sleds of supplies. It was great. This year there were only about 50 cm worth of kamemushi, I'd say. But then I'm not really a local yet, so who knows.