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Anyone that lives in Minnesota knows that it's less work—a lot less work—to shovel two inches of snow six times than it is to shovel 12 inches of snow once. 6 x 2 ≠ 12 x 1.

Call it Minnesota arithmetic.

It's our first big snow of the Winter. They're saying 8 to 12. Yikes.

All day, the city has been in battening mode, preparing. The grocery stores looked like the day before Thanksgiving, as everyone stocked up.

It's an annual ritual, and everyone's invited. For one brief moment, partisanship and denominationalism are laid aside; for now, we're all in this together, a Blizzard Fellowship. Neighbors help each other shovel out, and strangers push strangers out of snowbanks.

I go out to shovel the first two inches. It's really coming down hard. That's fine with me: call me crazy, but I actually enjoy shoveling snow. I'll take a good blizzard over your hurricane or lava flow any day of the lunar month, thanks very much. No wonder I live here.

I clear the driveway and front sidewalk, then the sidewalks of the neighbors on both sides, just for good measure. "Why do we live here again?" a woman asks, walking past. It's the traditional question.

I give her the ritual answer: "Because we're all clinically insane."

She laughs. "I keep forgetting," she says, trudging on into the wind.

Broom in hand, my neighbor stands looking mournfully at his snow-mounded car.

"Another lovely day in sunny Minneapolis," I deadpan.

(This is irony: we haven't seen the Sun for days.)

Steve shakes his head. "I just got home from ten days in Jamaica, and this is what I come back to."

"Welcome home," I say, wryly, then add: "More coming, I hear."

He begins to sweep the snow off of the car.

I’m no great fan of snow, I admit. It’s one of the things to celebrate where my first port of call is to absolutely hold up your right not to celebrate. For many of us, snow is hard work. Snow days can make getting to work a nightmare, and missed work isn’t fun if you can’t afford it.  Ice means isolation. Slippery surfaces mean real risk of injury. Cold weather kills people – usually the old and frail who cannot afford to heat their homes, and those who have no homes and are rough sleeping. Being able to enjoy the snow is a sign of privilege, and any celebration of it has to include recognition of that. It is not ok to shame or harass anyone who doesn’t enjoy it.

There is one particularly magical aspect of snow that is often overlooked by people who go out to play in it – and that’s footprints. Snow reveals who else has passed through, and if you can be out before human feet have obliterated all signs, snow can tell you stories about who was there and what they did.

Skritch! Skritch! Skriiiiitch!

It's been a dry winter here in Paganistan, so it's almost with a sense of relief that I shoulder the snow shovel and go out to clear the walk.

Minnesota being the Land of Common Sense, there's a logic to shoveling snow. You want to get to it early, before the feet of passers-by tramp it down. The sooner you get to it, the easier the job will be.

On our block, Fatima two houses down is always first. No matter how early I go out to shovel, her walk will already be clear.

Then comes Nick across the street, who shovels snow as a hummingbird hovers: you know that it's happening, but it's too quick to see.

Me, I settle for third.

Minnesota being also the Land of Polite, there are thews (customs, laws) governing how you shovel.

(That you do shovel, of course, is an unstated premise. Not to shovel one's sidewalk is tantamount to a declaration of indifference, unneighborliness, if not of downright sociopathy.)

You always, for instance, shovel your own walk and a little bit of your neighbor's. To shovel only your own walk is regarded as stingy, niggardly. But of course, you've got to be careful. Shovel too much of your neighbor's walk and you're making, as it were, a territorial claim. All things in moderation.

Because of how we see the world, witches, of course, have added incentives for shoveling our walks. Some would call it paranoia, but to us it just seems like common sense.

Why?

The snow has finally arrived here in NW PA. 

It's a mixed blessing for me. I worry about my young drivers, I worry about my husband who drives for a living, I worry about me driving. Icy snowy roads make me nervous, and here I am, living on top of a hill that I have to descend to get anywhere. As well, to get anywhere in this town, you either have to go up or down a hill.

A philosophical lot, Northrons.

I was out this morning shoveling this winter's first inch. (Up here in the North Country, snow comes progressively: First Flurry, First Laying Snow, First Shoveling Snow.)

Every single person that went past had something to say, a continuing conversation. You could construct an entire philosophy from what they said.

Well, it's here.

Early or late, it always comes.

Sure is beautiful, though.

Northern fatalism? Not really. Fatalism is laying down and letting it cover you. If this is fatalism, it's a fatalism of honor, a fatalism that spurs to action. If we're going to go down, we'll go down fighting, shovels—like swords—in hand.

In my religion, snow is sacred.

Try to remember that.

It's late winter. It's been a cold winter, and winter in Minnesota is always too long. The Sun climbs higher in the sky every day, the buds are starting to swell, and the redbirds are singing their spring song (“Pretty bird! Pretty bird!”), but spring is still only a hope on the rose-red dawn horizon. We're coming up on the snowiest time of year.

So it's good to be reminded that snow is a gift.

We call Him Thunder for His Voice, but you could call Him Storm. In summer, He gives His good gift of rain; in winter, snow.

Ah, beautiful snow. Look closely and you'll see that it's actually every color but white. Snow is a wonder, so varied, so full of character: light, heavy, wet, dry, granular, fluffy. “The higher the snow, the higher they grow,” they say, meaning, of course, the crops. It's a true saying, too.

Against winter cold, snow makes the best insulation. That's the paradox of snow: it's cold, but keeps us warm.