In a pandemic, every day's a snow day.

I used to love snow days and the opportunities they offered to get off the treadmill of busy work days, skip the usual routine of long commutes to the city and the office, and find peace and warmth in the comfort of your own home. They were best before email and the internet, when working from home meant a quiet day of reading or writing, away from the frequent phone calls and occasional office visitor. Even years later, when technology enabled work to follow us home, staying home on a snow day could be a welcome treat, one in which we could justify time away from our usual business because we needed to shovel our driveways or break up ice dams, or just unplug for a bit while the rest of our work-a-day worlds, like us, moved into an unfamiliar rhythm of slow motion. And, of course, we needed to (and wanted to) entertain the kids, who also were enjoying a day at home.

Snow days also allowed us to pause and reflect on the fast pace of our busy lives and to consider slower paced alternatives. A snow day was capable of stopping you in your tracks, diverting you from your planned schedule, and turning your attention to the larger questions that you forget to ask when you’re constantly focused on making that next deadline or showing up on time for that next meeting. It gave you permission to skip a beat, an excuse for letting go, if only for a little while. It made your crazy pace sane again.

What a difference a pandemic makes! Snow days just aren’t what they used to be. After nearly two years of on-again-off-again remote this and in-person that, many of us now treasure the times when it’s safe for us to go back into our offices and for our kids to go back to school. Our reality has flipped, and the unplanned day of working from home is now the rule and not the exception. Sure, many of us have also learned that we can do our jobs from home, and might even prefer it, and many employers have begun establishing remote-work policies that allow, if not encourage, us to do just that. But once your home becomes your office, you never really get away from work, and a snowstorm doesn’t provide the escape it once did.

So, we had a blizzard yesterday. It was the first real blizzard I’ve seen in years, combining heavy snow with high winds and causing white-out conditions. Although we were anxious all day about whether the power would go out and our heat turn off, that didn’t happen, and today we woke up to one of the brightest, most beautiful post-blizzard days I can remember. After shoveling that walkway outside our front door (our plow service had already cleared our driveway) I picked up my camera and went for a walk down the still, silent roads of the community where we live. Most people in our community winter in Florida, but I managed to run across some year-round neighbors we know and met some I didn’t know, some raking their roofs and others shoveling their driveways. It was one of the most enjoyable mornings I’ve experienced in quite some time.

The last huge storm we experienced was in 2015, a monster of a snow storm that delivered several feet of snow to the Boston suburb where we used to live. That winter, the Boston area received more than 110 inches of snow, a new record that still stands. I did not particularly enjoy those snow days, but I also didn’t worry much about work since pretty much all law offices and courts were closed and the entire legal community was in the same boat.

Then there was the famous April Fool’s Day blizzard of 1997. I remember it well because I was scheduled to drive to New York City that morning for a meeting in a huge class action lawsuit that I had just gotten involved in, but the more-than-two-feet of snow that fell that morning forced me to change my plans. Honestly, everyone thought winter was over, but nature had a big surprise in store.

But the granddaddy of all snowstorms that I’ve experienced came in 1966 in my home town just outside of Rochester, New York. It, too, was a blizzard, with lots of snow and powerful winds. After the snow stopped falling, my father and I went into our garage, found our shovels, and opened the garage doors, expecting to clear the driveway. As the doors opened, we discovered that the snow had drifted to more than six feet high, well above our heads and making any thought of shoveling impossible. I can’t remember how long we were out of school that year, but I’m quite sure it was at least a week, and because I was still a kid, I must have enjoyed the unplanned break.

I don’t know how much more snow we’ll get this winter, and some of what we have now will melt before the next storm. But I do miss the pre-COVID era, when we viewed staying home after a snowstorm as a welcome treat rather than just more of the same. Even now, though, a snowstorm, like a pandemic, can serve as a useful reminder that, regardless of what activities we have carefully planned, nature may have other ideas. Snow in particular, and nature more generally, can be great levelers, irresistible forces that humble us into recognizing the limits of our own powers (the Moby Dick to our Captain Ahab, I suppose, to put a literary spin on it.) We can’t beat them, and we would do well to respect them, even if (and, truly, because) they consistently prove time and again that we are not the centers of the universe that we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking we are. And, even though we understandably fear what we can’t control, sometimes it’s worth taking a moment to pause and marvel at nature’s beauty. I honestly can’t conceive of anything more worthwhile, or more vitally important.