Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars next to our new home under construction

It was with intention that I carried David Guterson's novel, Snow Falling on Cedars with me as I journey from my home in Texas. Events beyond my control called me to live in isolation under the fog-shrouded and rain-washed cedars standing above my tinny travel trailer home as I worked to rebuild the house that was lost to the arson's malice five years ago.  

 

Snow Falling on Cedars explores the passions of a lonely man grappling with loss and events he can not control, set in a fictional landscape nestled among the real towns north of Seattle and the islands of Puget Sound. It is a cold, silent and snowy landscape in the book, the very same and real landscape that I now find myself inhabiting north of Seattle in Snohomish County, Washington.

Like the protagonist in the book, I too long for connection, the touch of my beloved, an opportunity to resolve the past, and chart a tranquil future above the chaos of events and emotions. Unlike Ishmael Chambers in the novel, I have all the reason to believe my hopes and needs will be fulfilled.

Life imitates fiction, one might say. In an ironic confluence of fictional literary and real meteorological events; I have just read the last page of Snow Falling on Cedars where the plot is set against an unusual snow storm buffeting Puget Sound. My finished reading coincides with good tidings; after months of separation, my wife makes plans to visit me, returning to her native landscape in the evergreen wooded and moist grayness of the Pacific Northwest. She, and a rare forecast of heavy snowfall are both to arrive in Seattle on Christmas Day; both will be with me for for days. Come thou bitter cold and deep snow, challenge and buffet us for the coming days, sure to fail in dampening the ardor of our reunion.

 

Her mid-day arrival in Seattle is without wintry precipitation, but later we find the snow, as forecast, falling fast upon us as we drive north in the late afternoon to find refuge in a reserved hotel room a few miles from our home site, which we call The Pilchuck, after the Pilchuck Creek that cuts through our land. 

 

Snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even.

Enjoying a night's warm, reunited rest, we discover that while we slept, six inches of silent snow has fallen outside. It is December 26, The Feast Day of Saint Stephen, we step outside thinking of: Good King Wenceslas who went out on the Feast of Stephen, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even . We shared good company with the saintly Bohemian King of the old Christmas carol I figured.

Texas plates under PNW's winter furry

  

 

 

 

 

 

We awake and go about clearing the snow off the SUV for a travel adventure in 4WD across icy roads, a chance to give Sue her first real look at the partially built house rising up on our acreage.

 

Navigating along unplowed country lanes, we pull onto the apron in front of our steel gate, not sure if I want to unlock the gate and drive through deep snow and risk getting stranded in front of the house. 

 

 

 

I decide to park at the gate and walk to the house

Walking through mid-shin deep powder after parking at the gate will be a trudge two-tenths of a mile up the driveway to the construction site; we are game for a snow-shoeing trek - without snow shoes! The snow fall is fresh, powdery, deep and crisp and even. I call to Sue, "Mark my footsteps, my good wife, tread thou in them boldly, thou shalt find the winter's rage, freeze thy toes less coldly."

 

Sue bundles for the single-digit temps

Home construction idled for weeks by heavy snow 

 

Reaching the snow-covered house, we were in the single digits and the bare floor was covered in a glaze of ice. Rain seeping through the framed timbers had now made the basement an indoor skating rink. A feature neither planned nor welcomed. 

 

Sue walked through the framed house and I shared the vision of how it was going to look after the snow melted, and we got a roof and spent a bunch more money. It was quite exciting to see the dream house take shape.

Sue at basement door, now a ice skating rink