I always wished of a White Christmas

Growing up in southern Indiana I always wished for a white Christmas but seldom saw one. Snow, when it did fall, never lasted long.

Then I moved to Cooke City where it can snow every month of the year. By Christmastime there the snow is typically measured in feet. A white Christmas is a given.

Not all of Montana, however, is so lucky come the holiday season. I remember a December in Bozeman that started out white, but was brown and bare by Christmas. That won’t be the case this year. More than five feet of snow has already fallen on the Montana State University campus.

Livingston is also snow-covered, but that is sure to change. Snow never stays on the ground there very long, thanks to the relentless wind, which either blows it away to Big Timber, or warms enough to melt it.

In Malta, where I’ve lived for the past 17 years, I only remember one Christmas that wasn’t white. There had been snow early in the month, but by the 25th it had been blown into waist-high drifts by a Livingston-style wind, and the rest of the ground was bare.

That was unusual. Snow that falls up here usually doesn’t go anywhere. Even a scant covering typically lasts until spring. This is cold country, and we’re too far north and east to get any relief from chinook winds.

Folks up here don’t get tired of the snow. They get tired of the same snow.

This year, though, even when the forecast hasn’t called for it, we’ve gotten new snow. There have been a number of days when it has sifted down from dawn to dusk.

It’s shaping up to be a real winter, and we haven’t had one of those in more than ten years. My roof started leaking in December 2010 because of ice dams. The snow in the side yard was so deep that the dogs stared at us through the dining room windows, and it didn’t melt until April.

We need another winter like that. The drought has taken a toll on the land. We really can use the moisture.

And as an aside, a white Christmas is pretty much a lock this year from Alzada to Eureka and all of Montana in between.

Happy holidays.

May all your Christmases be white.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]