Sudden Snow

We travel back west every December,
Home for Christmas,
Grown kids and and grand children in their homes,
No house of our own.

Early-morning drive to BWI,
Connecting flights through Midwest cities,
Hoping for good weather,
Eventually landing at PDX.

Whether clouds or not,
There, out the window, when
The plane gets low enough to the ground,
Postage-stamp-sized farm fields come into view.

Subtle brown earth tones where vegetables will grow in summer,
Accented dark and light-green hues of Douglas firs and lichen-covered oaks,
The approach skirts the Columbia River,
Parallel to the runways.

Oregon on this side, Washington the other,
Only minutes earlier Mount Hood was eye level,
Adams, Rainier, and Saint Helens peak above,
Rolling mountains beside and beyond.

No matter how settled we feel in the east,
Living so far away from what is still familiar,
Even without our own house to gather,
This place we still call home.

Hoar frost on trees in the
Willamette Valley, Oregon

It is funny how such simple weather phenomena as hoar frost still catches my attention. I first saw it in Oregon - white edged everything in view - when driving back from California from Christmas, right before New Year 1979. We had driven straight through from Visalia, and it was 13° in Corvallis when we pulled into town around 1:00 AM. Our house was so cold that we could see our breath, and when climbed into bed, our blanket crackled with little lightning bolts. Fortunately the pipes hadn't frozen - we never did that again. The last time I saw hoar frost was in Albany right before New Years. Driving from my daughter's house for some guest supplies, past Waverly Park, everything was tinged in frost - like over 30 years ago - but in the time going and returning from Costco, the white dust was rapidly disappearing - gone like years past.