There has only been a bit of snow this year. Snow in the mouth of Sleipir, the imaginary horse.

I have called some friends scattered about the world and asked them about their snow. Oh yes, they say, ""It really snowed here". "How much?" I would ask. They answer "In boatloads, with the strength of steam engines, needing to be moved by bulldozers, rakes, shovels, snow blowers and teams of men working through the night until the next day without stopping for lunch, rearranging the snow by putting it in other places."

Ten years ago, in another place, another time, something about the snow called me to the window. It beckoned, a white maiden blizzard, a mermaid to the sailor rocks. I ran to the sea of it, although first I put on my hat and scarf and boots and mittens. Romance is great, but what's a love affair if it gives you pneumonia?

There I stood beneath the haloed lamplight, becoming cross-eyed as I tried to follow the paths of single snowflakes as they plummeted wetly onto my eyelashes. I called out to the city with my busy-broadcasting-day-radio-station voice "Everybody, put on your galoshes and come outside with me."

Looking up, I was reminded of the computer screen savers that make you feel as if you were traveling through star galaxies at a pretty good clip.

The thing about a blizzard is that you are always alone in it. Once, walking from the street to my house, a distance of only a few hundred yards, I got lost. It was daytime, but I was snow-blind. I walked a fence line. I fell down. I laughed. I ate some snow. It was snow madness.

My mother told me that her stepfather, from North Dakota,had told her that he used to tie a rope from the house to the barn so he could get to the barn in a blizzard without getting lost.

I invented a foolproof method for drunks to get home using my grandfather's technique. Substituting the house for the bar and home for the barn, I thought that if you didn't live too far from the bar, you could just run a cable from your house to your bar stool, hook a strap to your suspenders or your bibbers or your belt loop. Even if you were as drunk as a skunk, you could never go too far astray.

If you didn't make it all the way home, someone could just check your cable. Maybe leave you there if it weren't too cold. You could find your own way home when you were feeling better.

"That frozen concoction that helps me hang on."

Maj Lindstrom. Flicka Ricka Dicka. Snip Snap Snur.The Tompten. Twins that make up their own language that only they can understand. The red splash in the white snow in Kill Bill.

We sang a song named Snow in a choral singing group that I religiously attended on Monday evenings. The song was like snow, and we were the wind as we ran through it and celebrated it and ran from it into our warm and sometimes overheated houses.

People in America worship snowmen. They worship pumpkins too, but this is not about Pumpkin. It is about snow and the men made from it.

There is evidence of snowman worship everywhere, but especially at this time of the year, when there is snowfall. Snowmen gods and goddesses can be found in all the shops. Altars of snow people are erected in front yards, in backyards, on roofs and in alleyways.

You can tell a lot about people by what they do with snow.