Whether the Weather

We drove several hours and then we drove back, and the journey in between wasn't asphalt; it was weather. It was torrential, blinding rain yielding to cranberry-colored landscape (the rocks, the dust, the odd nuclearity of ice-wrapped limbs) and then everything was ice and the wheels beneath us slid and slid, toward darkness, toward blankets of snow. Returning home this morning, there was snow enough to build little snow creatures (had we the time) and slush enough to make us wonder whether we should actually attempt the half-plowed hills (were we crazy?), but after an hour of feeling like pioneers, we found ourselves on roads that again were calm, the gray lifting. Then there was a chunk of sun sitting on a throne of clouds. Then we were within a half hour of home. Then everything was familiar, our own lives again.

The point is: You can travel no more than 300 miles in one direction and experience an entire novel in weather—all the Shakespearean sturm and drang. I went a thousand places in my mind—back and forth, exhilarated, still, frightened, exasperated, awed. I remembered childhood weather. I remembered the weather from books. I thought of Faulkner again, that river rising.