THE SANTA BARBARA/KAMCHATKA DICHOTOMY

Seems like the snow this year opted to fall in February and March, for some reason eschewing the springlike December and the mild January, reserving itself for heavy snowfalls every few days thereafter, just as we in the igloos were expecting outdoors to drop the icy act and not require so much firewood of us who are already making garden moves and re-stacking shiitake logs in our minds.

But as I’ve mentioned occasionally in these weathered musings, oftentimes it’s blizzarding here and beachweather only a kilometer away, which makes things interesting. Yesterday we drove into Kyoto for some shopping and a stop at the YWCA (where I exchange paperbacks now and then); it was sort of like leaving Kamchatka and a few moments later arriving in Santa Barbara.

This morning down at the train station after another night’s snowfall, as I stood looking around in the early sunlight under a clear cold sky, the lake blue, the mountains crisp white, patterned in geometric patches of lumbered areas, some of them almost vertical - I can’t imagine lumbering an almost vertical landscape - the view went on until blue of water and white of mountains met a sky-high curtain of dark-silver silk, strung across the lake: the shifting border of snow country. Beyond it the snow was falling heavily, obscuring everything; I was right at the edge of the high-pressure area; the border could shift this way any minute, and I’d be in the heart of a blizzard.

It probably will shift a couple of times before the day is out, putting us in and out of Siberia by its massive whim; maybe tonight it will swing north for good and we’ll be in Santa Barbara as of tomorrow, instead of Kamchatka.