If the shovel stuck in that fresh white fall it was for the great heavy hunks pushed aside by the only vehicles on the road that day. The unsullied powder comes lightly, lifted from the pile to be moved. Wind blusters by, dusting off the top layer, to send the minuscule flakes sparkling glittery across the blank new surface of the world. Only in the repetitive motion does the body tire from hefting this fluff. Until the shovel sticks against a grimy cake of roadside slush that come uneasily free from the pillowy heaps it has bolstered. Here, the shoulders, breast, and back grow weary. We ask the legs to do work besides that of shuffling, wading through the un-density of freshly fallen blizzard, packing it in the slog.

There is nothing but the heat of our exertion now, breath to melt the whole refrigerated world. The shovel and the body in repetitive vigor, working wisely in a rhythm efficient, deliberate. Haste will not get us through anything called cyclone. Hurry does not serve a body whose work is far from finished. Three feet down until the solid ground, sometimes more. Sometimes bolstered in hunks brought by engined shovels, their lights blinking as if this was an emergency. Is it? The world around is silent in its three-foot new blanket, our effort unseen.

In the morning all the human homes will have similar trenches dug, by different bodies, other machines. A topside, sunshined world of warrens. The emergency lights stop scraping past after the day breaks, welcoming a sky so clear one wonders how the world went white, and whether its reflection could cause sunburn. Nothing more falls, and so the paths we’ve dug, narrow and piled high on the sides, become a delightful part of home. Here we are just animals, tunneled out against natural forces, basking in the sun and cold. The sugared glory of new-fallen snow.