I was in New England this week when Blizzard Calvin howled its way up the coast, dumping snow and superlatives on a winter-hardened landscape. I love a good blizzard and Calvin hit every note: on TV, intrepid meteorologists in down parkas and ski masks braved the gales, standing on snow-blasted street corners talking seriously about bomb cyclones and thunder snow, their excitement contagious. Cancellations rolled in like waves: planes, trains, buses and highways closed; city and then state travel banned; schools, stores, restaurants, even food deliveries suspended.  

There’s nothing like that feeling of the engines of commerce grinding to a halt. Of a vast stoppage, a sudden and miraculous cessation of the 24/7 forward momentum that regiments our days, harrying and hounding us all from dawn to dusk and birth to death. It takes something big to open up that collective breathing space — an act of God, a cosmic force majeure. Or just a really good blizzard.  But of course, anything powerful enough to suspend daily life, even for a short time, is also perilous.  

In 1977, an epic, four-day blizzard paralyzed upstate New York, where I grew up. Snow drifts covered the entire first floors of buildings, stranding people in homes and offices. Ice snapped power lines and left thousands without heat or light. 29 people died and Jimmy Carter declared the first-ever federal disaster for a snowstorm. I was 17, a high school junior worried about college entrance exams and glad of the extra time to study, but it didn’t take long for the initial wonder of a major snowstorm to shift into a scarier register. I remember venturing into waist-deep snow and the momentary terror of being unable to move; the sound of downed power lines hissing and sparking in the snowy street; the sudden, sharp crack of ice-freighted tree limbs breaking. And the story of the man who tried to get home from work and whose wife found him in his car the next morning, frozen to death in front of their house. But I also remember the way people throughout Buffalo rallied to help each other, organized fleets of snowmobiles to deliver food and medications, and printed up thousands of defiant “I survived the blizzard of 77” t-shirts.

This time around, when Calvin roared in, I was staying with my parents and sister in rural Vermont. We reminisced about ‘77 and listened nervously to the wind howl at night, but we’d had a foot or so of snow a few days earlier and knew we wouldn’t get much more. Still, when I woke to canceled flights and an unexpected extra day of vacation, I felt again that sense of being suspended in a time out of time, lifted out of the everyday and into some bright, newly measureless expanse. It was as wondrous and welcome as any childhood snow day.  And also held a kernel of awareness that I’ve come to think hides inside every experience of wonder: a secret recognition of the snowflake lightness of our lives, the fragility of so much we believe to be solid and real. The tender and tenuous beauty at the heart of existence. 

That was my experience of wonder this week. Tell us yours, if you have a chance. And join me this coming weekend as we explore the concept of natural magic with literary scholar Renee Bergland. I learned so much from her about Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, poetry and biology. I’m excited to share it with you!

— Anne