Snow has always represented an interruption for me. This comes in part because as a southerner snow has always been rare. It comes maybe once or twice a year with any seriousness and when it does, it stops everything. Schools are closed, as well as many businesses. People hunker down in front of fires drinking hot chocolate while kids play outside on a day of unexpected freedom. 

I'm sure if we were all forced we could make it on the roads, but who wants to? Snow is an excuse for an unplanned day—a time when we can do what we want because we "can't get out in the mess." 

But farmers have to get out in that mess. With my cattle on pasture and the pasture covered with snow I had to go and give them a little feed. Snow and ice and other kinds of weather can bring death and disease to a farm, as blizzards in New Mexico recently showed. Snow brings out the best and worst of a farmer's management. 

Snow brings definition—not only to the landscape but to our lives. It gives us an unexpected event that allows us a new opportunity to show who we are. But it doesn't have to be snow—it could be any interruption, even a catastrophe. Anyone who has watched ABC's show Lost knows that even for all of the troubles of the survivors of the crash of Oceanic 815 their lives are brought into sharp definition. Life in the show is raw, but it provides new hope for many of the characters. 

There is much worry now about recession and peak oil and global warming. What we need, I think, is an interruption—an astronomical spike in gasoline prices for instance—that will force us to take the time to reexamine ourselves. In other words, a sort of national snow day that will help us prepare for, or even prevent, a national blizzard. It might be difficult, it might be a hassle, but I believe that like snow, an interruption will bring all of the definition we need to see who we are, where we are, and where we should be going.