Some people don’t like the snow. Not me. I love it.

Some people don’t like the snow. And I suppose I might be a little more grumpy about a blizzard if I had somewhere I needed to be in a hurry.

But I don’t have someplace I need to be, and snow reminds me of my home in Maine, waiting for the first big snowfall of the season. I love the way streetlights reflect orange off the snow; the way the sky reflects blue. I love the way the snow muffles the din of the world, and the way most sane people close themselves safe in the warmth of their own homes. In a world blanketed by snow, I feel as if I’m its sole inhabitant, strolling through an endless snowglobe.

This is the season of cider and cocoa, of wood-fires and coal furnaces, of snow angels and snowball fights. I remember climbing a hill of snow twice as tall as me just to get to my elementary school; I could’ve gone around and saved myself the trouble – but my path to school was through the snow, uphill both ways — and I liked it!

This snow-covered world, quiet and calm like the still of the night, reminds me how my glasses used to fog up when I’d rush into the house, breathlessly, from playing out in the cold. I loved those days, when the warmth of the fireplace burned my chill-stung cheeks and the heat of cocoa scalded my tongue.

I even smile remembering the times my mother told me, “Put on a sweater, you’re making me cold.”

Tonight, I spent an hour with my friend Eva, a transplant from Savannah, tonight, traipsing through the snow and teaching her how to make snowballs – out of snow so light and fluffy that she exclaimed “It’s like air!” when I gently placed one into her hand.

And a few weeks ago I taught a few young women — CU students — from Australia how to have a snowball fight, with the first snow they’d ever seen in their lives. Our bus had barely driven back into Boulder proper when they spotted the ground covered by a thin layer of snow… but they couldn’t conceal their giddiness at first snowfalls.

Seeing their reactions reminds me that joy is a simple thing, not something that arises from the successful alignment of complex conditions. Any given moment can gift us great happiness even when the world falls down around us, if we’re open to the treasures around us.

So it is with snow.

I wrote my first poem on a night much like this all the way over in New York, rushing home from the library, a love poem about snow and trees and lakes and women:

Beauty is walking back across campus at night,
the clouds gray against the darkened faces of old buildings,
the trees bare against the whispering snow,
the lights like stars to my sleepy soul…

Perhaps I romanticize what’s just a turn of the weather, but I’ve always had a love affair with the frosted world, where my breath turns white and hangs in clouds in the air.

But the truth is simple: snow falling makes me feel like a kid again, and as it coats and covers everything around me, the snow reflects the undimmed joy and love – glee – that I felt on those magical days when I woke to the flurries of flakes falling on the woods and lawns and fields of my youth.

Time to throw on my coat, my hat, my scarf & gloves; time to ready some cocoa for my return. Time to play in the snow — my simplest joy.