The title of this blog could refer to time, meaning day after day the picture outside in Northwest Ohio is one of snow…and snow…and snow. But snow has many interpretations as does the manner in which we say “It’s snowing again.” Was that delight in your voice? Was that sarcasm or irritation or disappointment?

One phenomenon occurring twice this winter is frozen fog, at least that’s what I called it until I researched that frozen fog is a real thing. It’s suspended ice crystals occurring when it’s 22 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It has other names: ice frost, air hoar, pogonip. (Pogonip is not likely where I live, since we have no deep valleys.) One thing about frozen fog (as our forecaster calls it) is that Carl Sandburg was right. It “comes on little cat feet.” The “cat” was hardly mewing; it was chilling, not cuddly. It didn’t move on as cats usually do. It stayed, stuck in its mysterious depths, its dangerous limitations, dulling yet engaging the imagination. Its hesitant, unobtrusive entrance portended danger whitening and weakening reality. Vulnerable before sunlight’s power, it fought to assert its confused self-protective ignorance waiting for an answer to the question “Is anybody out there?”