ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 23, 1996 TAG: 9601230047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
THE BLIZZARD of '96 - when we and all our busy world were stopped dead in our tracks.
You can't fool, or fool around with, Mother Nature. Call her by whatever name you may choose - fate, destiny, God, weather systems, blizzard - we are all pawns in larger hands. There is something very humbling about acts of nature, such as this record-making blizzard. There is much we can learn from them, too.
Most of the things we "have to do" don't have to be done. Does it really matter if we wait to exchange the wrong-size shirt, rush to the big sale at the mall, get the "special" on bananas at the grocery store? Did we have to shovel out the driveway like the neighbors across the street? Might we not feel better if we actually walk three blocks to get the milk and bread?
Somehow, life goes on if we don't punch the clock, pound the pavement, make the meeting, clear the front walkway. Instead, we are left free to do what we never seem to have time to do: sit still and just think.
That is what I was doing as the blizzard relented, and I was flying from New England back to Roanoke. All around me I saw the world Christina Rossetti described in "Mid-Winter:"
"In the bleak mid-winter, Frosty wind may moan;
Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone.."
I held my breath as we half rolled, half skidded down the runway and took off to look down on that frozen midwinter world.
I saw Northeast America as I never had seen it before: state after state covered with a thick blanket of glistening snow, silent, serene. Underneath that heavy blanket, the world's busy bustling superpower was sound asleep. Schools, shopping centers, factories, seaports, airports were empty and motionless. The only thing moving were the snowdrifts, leaving tails of white flakes in the wake. The silent architecture of the snow. The beauty and novelty of a world suspended in time - when all the trees are bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Somehow the serenity below reached out to me, high above the white world. I was given what I seldom get in my life: a time for pausing.
Pause: a temporary stop or rest. To cease for a time; to intermit speaking or acting; to linger or dwell. I seldom use the word "pause," or act on it. Nor do many whom I know, love, work with. We are all on the go, on the move, on the make. We have miles to go before we sleep - and we are running out of time. So we seldom have time to pause, let alone time to stop and let the day's impressions sink in. But we do have that time during floods, hurricanes, blizzards. It is a gift from the gods.
In fair weather, we struggle to take care of our physical needs; blizzards give us time to take care of the soul. They invite us into contemplation - the rarest of commodities in modern life
How can you contemplate if you must compete? If you go too hard, you can always get a little therapy. Thomas Moore makes this point in his book "Care of the Soul":
"Many could avoid psycho-therapy simply by giving themselves a few minutes each day for quiet reflection. This simple act would provide what is missing in their lives: a period of non-doing that is essential nourishment to the soul."
"Soul" isn't a thing, but a quality - a way of experiencing and understanding ourselves and our lives. Farmers must cultivate their fields, but all of us must cultivate our souls. Perhaps we do this best when we are asleep and dreaming, alone, or confronted by a blizzard. We have to separate the essential from the trivial, the hype from the truth. How do we discover truth? Perhaps not by consulting another expert or taking another course - but by caring for the soul.
Now the plane approached Roanoke; the ancient blue mountains were sleepy and snow-capped. Lights on buildings below twinkled like little stars. The wind was blowing. As we landed the snow was dancing, flirting, skimming along. I thought of it as the shifting, fluid fabric of experience. We hurried into the terminal. How would I get the car out of the snowdrifts? Had my e-mail been working? How could I make up for "lost time?" But what made me think it got lost?
The snow melted, the machines roar, the traffic jams, and I am back watching the Battle of the Budget and formula Hollywood movies. But things will never be quite the same. I lived quietly through the Blizzard of '96.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.
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