Snow Blankets the Country, Once Again

We were informed by some locals that the Southern Appalachians don't have just one winter. The majority of the snow comes in the late winter and early spring, and they name the "winters" by what is in bloom at the time of the snowfall. For example, Dogwood Winter, or Blackberry Winter. We've just experienced another one of these winters, here in Damascus, VA. We had intended to leave this morning, but the prospect of climbing a 5,500 foot mountain in wet snow was not that appealing. Instead, we have joined droves of other restless hikers, roaming this quiet, little, stop-light-free town.

What hikers do best is walk, so what happens when we are prevented from doing so? At first, we appear to enjoy the rest. We will clean and dry our tents, and prop up sore feet. We will unpack and repack our gear, carefully looking for something that can be sent home to save weight. We will read decades-old issues of Backpacker and National Geographic from the hostel library. We will search the town for televisions, internet connections and a warm place to make a long-distance phone call home. Some of us will knit. We will contemplate heading out in the snow anyway...we have the gear, it's supposed to warm up by Tuesday.

Eventually, we will find ourselves down Main Street, at Sicily's Italian Restaurant, run by an Arabic-speaking family with an adorable toddler, the only restaurant in a Baptist town open on Sunday. They will be surprised by a steady stream of hungry hikers, on a day they expected to be very slow because of the snow.

While the rest of the town is quietly blanketed in snow, the windows in Sicily's fog up, groups of strangers-turned-friends dressed in colorful Polarfleece drinking coffee and playing Scrabble.

It's so pleasant, I forget that I'd rather be hiking....