Jan 31st:
An ice-storm blew in over the southern United States overnight, and Rhodes students woke up to tinkling trees, encrusted in clear glass, and no class.
A snow day in Memphis is a rare thing. The entire city shuts down. But Café Eclectic, the local brunch favorite, was open when I called. My friends and I sat at a booth by the window and sipped coffee, feeling French.
The Lynx Lair and the library closed early that night. Classes were canceled for the next day, too, and professors were emailing us about adjusted syllabuses.
It was too pretty outside not to take a walk. In the still wintry darkness the lampposts lit up the ice-sheathed boughs, illuminating them into frozen suspended clouds of gold and blue. the clear branches in radiant webs of gold and blue. Cars lay still beneath their snow blanket across the quiet parking lot. A snowman beneath the Southwestern Hall steps was ice-clothed, too. The winding paths leading to Briggs Hall looked like paths of a winter wonderland. I could see my breath, and my boots crunched on the ice.
Back in my warm room, I painted a watercolor, something I hadn’t done for a long time: it was a winter landscape. In the foreground was a fox, its paws melting into the snow, against a lonely backdrop of a frosted forest and a castle. Beyond were mountains, and hawks flying over them.
Feb 1st:
My friends and I were up at 6:30am, breathing smoke and making our way over the ice-river roads to catch the sunrise. The sunrise was a faint one, which we watched shiveringly over the smoking chimney of a dorm and the arc of ice-encased trees.
