Where I come from, it doesn’t snow. Sure, there’s the odd mountain top in the southern states that might get a dusting in deepest Australian “winter”, but in Queensland you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of… a snowball.
So despite how scared I am about freezing to death as my first northern winter approaches (not to mention my first winter of any sort after two years of endless-summer-jaunting between Australia and the US), imagine my excitement to wake up to a blanket of snow the day after my birthday:
Prior to this I had seen snow exactly twice. Around new year’s on my first trip to New York in 2008/09, when I giggled gleefully around Riverside Drive in a light flurry, peering at the world through snowflake eyelashes and marvelling that the flakes peppering my dark coat made me look like a lamington. Then Halloween weekend 2011, the eerieness of waking hungover to find it’s snowing in October and then trekking to a bluegrass gig in Midtown in full costume (Miss Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction) with freezing slush in my shoes.
This time around I was determined to enjoy it, and not just from the warmth of the apartment! It was no weather for biking, so the Free Spirit stayed home with her basket full of snow. I took the train in to Manhattan and took some pictures of what was a beautiful sunny day on the High Line.
How crazy, seeing flowers amidst the snow…
What a day!
Clare Fletcher 