Mid-March, and we got a surprise snowstorm. I woke up to everything white outside, with big fluffy flakes still falling. The snow kept coming all day, and by afternoon it had piled up thick enough to bend the tree branches down.

The snow was still falling when I looked out at our front path, completely buried, and couldn’t help myself, so I grabbed the shovel and went out to try clearing it.

I tried pushing the snow to the side, but got stuck almost immediately. The snow was so light and fluffy that it just filled up the shovel, and the snow piling up in front just pushed back. I was pushing against a shovel packed with snow and getting nowhere. So I gave up and went back inside.

A little later, my husband went out to clear the path. I watched him take quick, shallow scoops and toss the snow aside each time, never loading up too much. He cleared a big section pretty fast. Watching him, I thought, yeah, trying to push all that snow at once was not going to work. This is how I should do it.

The next day I went back out, copying his technique: scoop, toss, scoop, toss. I was going at it hard, but my hands got sore and my arms gave out pretty quickly. Out of options, I tried pushing the snow forward with the shovel instead — and it worked surprisingly well. That’s when I noticed: overnight, the snow had started to melt. It was denser now, with a thin layer of water between the snow and the ground that made it slide easily. Scraping it up took barely any effort, and pushing it along felt almost effortless too.

The snow had changed completely from the day before. If I hadn’t noticed and just kept shoveling the same way, I probably would have kept working until my arms worn out, taken a break, and started all over again.

Thinking about it after, I feel like a lot of things work this way. When we’re dealing with something, the thing itself might be quietly changing the whole time. Like that snow: fluffy one day, dense the next. The right approach shifts with it. Brute force can get the job done sometimes, but if we stay observant and stay open to trying something different, we might find there’s a better way.

Piece a Puzzle

Memolines ~ Things change, so should our…