Grumpy Nun




Photo by Karen Streveler, OSB, of how the monastery campus should look, but doesn't

I don’t come from Minnesota. I come from England. We have snow in England but it’s wet, heavy snow which comes and goes in the space of a few days or, at most, weeks. It’s certainly not up to the high standard of a Minnesota snowfall. I love dry Minnesota snow. It seemed like a real miracle the first time I got snow in my boots here. Scenes of jubilation – there was time to tip it out of the boots before my socks got wet!

I should come clean, I am a snow addict. If there was snow all year, I’d be happy. And when I first came to Minnesota I really thought I’d found an almost perfect winter climate. This is how it was. Every morning I would wake up to a beautiful dawn, the sun would climb up into the sky and there’d be that perfect contrast between blue sky and pure-white, diamond-dotted snow. The highs were always in the mid-20s, so every afternoon, I’d put on my down coat and my boots and go out for a lovely invigorating walk in the woods. About once a week, there’d come a snowfall so that everything remained looking pristine and pure, no dirty slush ever offended the eye.

I’m now experiencing my 12^th Minnesota winter and nothing has ever quite matched up to that first one. Sadly, I’ve come to accept that it can’t be like that every year. But I still do get very excited when the first snowfall happens. It was a good one this year, but I did have the nagging feeling that because it was wet snow, it might behave like English snow and disappear.

It did and I am now grumpy because of it. Warm temperatures and rain have conspired to remove all but a few traces of the glorious white stuff. Left behind is a rather depressing colorless remnant of fall. I feel colder than I do when it snows because, although the absolute temperature is quite high, above freezing, it’s a damp cold that’s left behind which seeps into the fiber of my being.

It had better snow properly (as I would term it) soon, and stay snowy, or I am going to be one grumpy nun for the foreseeable future!

Karen Rose, OSB