Snow days for anyone over the age of 8 aren’t really a thing.
I thought about this one morning last week as I watched the snow come down steadily in Fairbanks while drinking my coffee. It used to be that the world — well, my world anyway — would shut down when it snowed like that.
It would go something like this: Snow would be forecast. Maybe there would be an early pickup at school. That night, the TV would stay on with the news humming in the background and then my parents would turn it up for the local weather report. They’d complain about shoveling, wonder aloud if someone should go grocery shopping (but then again: the crowds!) or fret about missing work.
All of that was white noise to me. I would walk outside, check what the temperature felt like and sniff the air. Was there that sharp, cold feeling and smell? Was there the heavy, orange sky that always seemed to bode well? Were there already a few flakes coming down?
I would go to bed feeling as close to God as ever, wishing in my fervent 8-year-old prayers that school would be canceled. Not delayed, which was almost worse than a full day because it was two more hours of dread. Just outright canceled. I closed my eyes hoping with a full-body kind of focus to wake up to see piles of snow, still coming down and no sign of stopping.
In the morning I would wake up quickly and run to the window. If there was a little snow on the ground, my heart sank. But if snow was dusting up the window, or better yet, filling up the screen, if there was a tall layer sitting on tree branches and it was still coming down hard, my next stop was finding my parents.
Some mornings we would watch words scroll along the bottom of the morning newscast and wait for our town to come up. Seeing my school district listed as canceled felt like being famous, and also like suddenly being free.
Those snow days were a mixture of staying cozy indoors and romping around in the snow. There was both excitement and contentedness. Part of it was the simple beauty and aesthetic of snow. It glittered, it exploded when you threw it, and it created a magical sense of quiet and comfort. The other part was the joy of playing, and that feeling of getting an unexpected day with no agenda at all.
I thought about all of this as I drank coffee in Fairbanks, watching the snow come down. I’m still much more excited about snow than my parents ever were — I’ve chosen Alaska over Massachusetts as my home, after all. But now there are no snow days. I feel a sense of responsibility about my work, rather than being dragged to it like school. Even if I wanted to take the day off during a big snow event, there’s really no reason to now that there’s the ability to work remotely.
It goes back to not having enough pauses in life. That TV channel my parents used to turn on is on the air now 24/7, and as the ability to communicate and collaborate has expanded with technology, so has the volume of work we have taken on.
Some of it is what I consider fake work — anyone who has ever even looked sideways at a computer can attest to the combined brilliance and infuriating, unexpected hurdles of technology. Yet a lot of the work we create is real. There is as much work as there is potential in the world for growth and change, so we are pacesetting with our technology to do as much as possible. We don’t often explicitly reward or encourage rest or play.
I had this idea, though, watching the snow, missing that feeling of snow days, and feeling sorry that I’d never have them again. I looked at the time and realized I’d woken early enough that I had more than two hours before I needed to be at work.
That’s enough time to run.
On the one hand, that’s ridiculous, right? Old me telling young me that getting my “snow day” would someday turn into spandexing up and jogging makes me sad for myself.
Yet I felt excited, not burdened, by the idea of getting exercise. There was a thrill — small compared to my excitement as a kid about a snow day, but still — about going out even for an hour with the snow still coming down.
So I went. I ran about 4 miles, and the snow piled up in my eyelashes and on my hair. It was quiet and peaceful. I warmed up quickly, but when I got back inside my skin was wet and blotchy, like it used to be as a kid after an afternoon playing outside.
Snow days don’t happen for me like they used to when I was a kid. But it’s still important to know there are still windows into the same feeling of excitement and play. It’s just that now I access this feeling in another way, and from a different phase of life.
Alli Harvey lives in Palmer and plays in Southcentral Alaska.