When a Blizzard Stops the Clock

Originally published in the Laconia Daily Sun

When you grow up in New Hampshire, a day of snow, even one categorized as a blizzard, doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. We live with snow mounds through the winter months. If you live in the North Country, entrance halls are filled with boots, hats, various collections of mittens and layers of sweaters and jackets. In Manhattan, of course, it is completely different. Most people don’t even own boots for walking in heavy snow, so the first question after a snowstorm revolves around what to wear on your feet.

If you were connecting on Facebook, reading a newspaper, or watching television last weekend, you heard about the blizzard in New York City on Saturday.

The mayor shut down the city in the early afternoon, and cars, buses, and other modes of transportation were not allowed on the streets. New Yorkers were truly confined.

I remember one evening as a high schooler in New Hampshire, years and years ago when we lived on a hill and could easily walk to a country road. One night I took a walk with my brother after a heavy snow. The sky was as black as coal, the stars seemed to sparkle and the only sound came from our boots as we stepped down into the snow. White silence against the black night sky.

I thought about that evening walk again on Saturday. In Manhattan, we are surrounded by sound and noise: trucks, planes, emergency vehicles, hip-hop music wafting through car windows. It is never quiet and with noise comes movement, as it weaves in and out of our hearing. On Saturday, the city was silent.

Then, as the day progressed and the wind and heavy snow did make it impossible to go for a walk, I began to think about time. What day was this? All semblances of a routine were gone. One couldn’t go to the gym, to the dry-cleaners, pick up the newspaper or even visit friends. It was unlike every other day. The time was ours alone. What one chose to do was something one might not ever do on a Saturday. Read all day. Watch all of David Bowie’s movies and weep about his recent death. Clean a closet that has been neglected for years. We were given hours that were just for us. It wasn’t a Wednesday, a Friday or a Saturday. It was just a pocket of time in a silent white city. “Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels: only when the clock stops does time come to life.” (William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury)

Perhaps I had these thoughts as I have been reading When Breath Becomes Air by the late Paul Kalanithi, a young, brilliant neurosurgeon who was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at age thirty-six years old. How do you think about time when you know you are going to die? And yes, we are all going to die, but we assume it is in years or decades, not months. Dr. Kalanithi offers us insights about what it is to live knowing time is limited. It is a beautifully written book that leaves one wanting to read it again.

Central Park now has more snow than the ski areas in New Hampshire and Vermont. It would be fun to explore on snowshoes. Sunday, when everyone emerged to enjoy the transformed landscape, it would have been the perfect day for a sled dog derby or a night hiking tour as they do at Gunstock Mountain. Our major storms come once or twice in a decade and there isn’t room to keep skis, boots and snowshoes in the closet, so none of these things can be planned spontaneously.

Time did stop on Saturday and it made me long to spend a real winter in New Hampshire, where there are many silent nights, white landscapes and opportunities in which to go clomping in the snow.