Dreaming of Snow

The other night I dreamt it started snowing and it was wonderful. I know, strange statement coming from a guy who had come to detest the white stuff by the time we left Denver. But this dream was…different. I wasn't in Denver; I was in Phoenix. Now, snow in Phoenix isn't unheard of, but it's extremely rare and seldom lasts more than a few hours after dusting the ground. It's so rare in fact, that I had a very hard time finding any decent photos to illustrate it.

In this dream I was coming out of a Trader Joe's…or a Sprouts…or a Whole Foods…or some other hipster-addled grocery store where people buy ready-to-eat artisanal, cruelty-free organically-grown, non-GMO gluten-free potstickers and during the time I'd been in the store (picking the last of the good orange cherry tomatoes individually out of a bin), the skies had clouded over and temperature had dropped precipitously. It felt like snow weather. The clouds were hanging—to quote a line from Rocky Horror—dark and pendulous. The ground was already turning white as the flakes began falling.

I wasn't concerned. I knew it wouldn't be like a Denver storm where I might have trouble getting home, and the sheer joy I felt at the cold temperature made me realize on some level I actually missed that kind of weather.

We're now in our third summer back in Phoenix; a milestone that I've always marked as being fully acclimated to a climate—especially one as brutal as Phoenix. It's marks the point that you can relax and take solace in knowing the ridiculously hot days won't last forever; that in just a few short months cold water will actually start coming out of the cold water tap again and you might even have to wear a hoodie when you go out.

Come to think of it, the whole thing might just have been fever-induced as I was coming down sick—something akin to a (reverse) plot line from that old Twilight Zone episode The Midnight Sun…