Smokey Mountain Breakdown

I wake up this morning to 50 mph winds and blowing snow. It's already snowed more this year than it ever has since I came here seven years ago. Of course, I'm in the tiny little tail of this storm that is wagging over the NC/TN border.

I have always loved the winters here. There's a certain Zen beauty to the bareness of the mountains. The stark gray-green forests--misty, linear outlines marching steadily toward a vanishing point. Who knows what's beyond that? Some dark glade where In the Hall of the Mountain King is playing softly and a troll gnaws on a human femur, no doubt.

Friend Scott used to get dreadfully depressed here during the winters. He would be full of dark stories and imagine "Three-Toe"--the monster purported to live in his dreary little holler--scraped at his bedroom window. The mountains always have a little bit of magic, whatever time of year--sometimes dark, sometimes whimsical, always dangerous.

But even I am not immune to the darkness this winter has wrought--I find myself trapped in my little cabin as the snow piles up outside thinking dark, Friend Scott thoughts. Okay, not exactly Friend Scott thoughts--he's always so over the top about everything and I'd need to be seriously depressed to get that dark. But I do wonder sometimes if there is an end to this cold. I can't envision the warmth of spring or the apple blossoms at Carvers. I feel like throwing a fit. I feel like raging at the sky. I feel like the end is nowhere in sight and serious magic must be brought to bear to end this frigid winter.