We've all heard from grade school forward that there are forty-three words for snow in "the Eskimo language," or fifty words, or one hundred and one, or a thousand and three (journalists use the idea as a kind of standing lead for talking about snow, first of all, but also about any of those things a culture knows well and has multiple words for, like sex), but in fact, according to my favorite internet linguist, Anthony C. Woodbury, of the University of Texas at Austin (not a snowy place, but good for linguists), it's impossible to count how many words there are for snow in Eskimo. First of all, the people formerly called Eskimo speak many languages. Second, it's hard to decide what to count. Snow, snowing, snowy, snowless? Slush? Slushy? Icicle? Drift? Drifting? The only way to get a satisfyingly big number is to count it all, which you can do as well for English.

One of the Eskimo languages is Yupik, which Dr. Woodbury peruses for snow words. He doesn't even try to count, just enumerates all the problems of doing so and clues us in to the fact that there's a respected book out there called The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, by one Geoff Pullum. Still, Woodbury lists some evocative words, citing "lexemes [word roots] referring to snow and snow-related notions in Steven A. Jacobson's (1984) Yup'ik Eskimo dictionary."

Qunuk is snowflake. Kaneq is frost. Kanevvluk are fine snow or rain particles. Natquik is drifting snow. Aniu is snow on the ground. Muruaneq is soft deep snow. Nutaryuk is fresh snow. Qanisqineq is snow floating on water. Pirta is a blizzard or snowstorm.

Some Inuit words, from Ruth Kirk's enlightening book, Snow: Api is snow not yet picked up by wind. Upsik is snow reworked by wind and deposited in firm mass. Siqoq is snow moving along the surface.

And my goodness, we've had a lot of the white stuff this winter here on the Temple Stream. When it's rained on the coast, it's snowed here, and all winter. One of my outbuildings has caved in (along with a Walmart roof in southern Maine, and several of the old barns around here). I propped up the rafters with two-by-fours early on, saving my lawn mower and bikes, which I can't get to now, and won't until the snow melts, probably in mid-April. Our road's like a tunnel, the banks are so high, and I've given up shoveling the back deck. I skied over the picnic table the other day, only realizing it later. The skiing further out back is wonderful, except if you fall, you disappear. Ski poles go all the way down to the handles, then elbows, whoa! There's got to be a word for that!

Surely every far-northern (and, I guess, far-southern) human differentiates between hundreds of kinds of snow and snow states, just instinctively, just looking at the stuff, handling it. Visions of snowfall and snowpack and snow days and snow jobs and snow guns dance in my head as I snowshoe to the compost pile, and to the birdfeeders, and to my studio. One or two trips and the snow is sufficiently packed to make a path good until the next storm, which this winter is tomorrow, most days. I've got my own thousand words for snow:

Snowropes-those quiet mornings after wet snow when the accumulations on branches and wires slip and briefly hang catenary in the sun. And showtime, let's call it: the outside light over the barn door turned on as snow falls from darkness into the spotlight, the million flakes taking shapes and swirling in wind.

Time warp: snow coming at you in your headlights, hypnotizing.

Zebra: when the accumulation on our steel barn roof sags and separates into alternating stripes of snow and bare roof in animal-skin lines, suggesting movement and gesture, life.

Snowlevator: This refers to the way the path to the stream rises as the snow gets deeper, till snowshoeing or skiing you're ducking under branches you could never even reach in summer.

Chandelier: that clinking, clacking morning after an ice storm, when the whole world is covered in an inch of clearest ice, all the trees bowed down, infinite prisms under the infinite candle power of the sun.

Trackdust: a half inch of nice snow on top of well-packed firn that lets you see what creatures have been prowling the winter night, best when it lingers several days, and the beasts start to venture out of dens: bobcats, foxes, snowshoe hares, mice with tails dragging Often, as well, one finds fascinating crime scenes (who killed the mourning dove?). One can tell fresh tracks by how hard they are; new tracks are about the same as the rest of the snow for an hour, then get harder, and harder yet.
Snorkels are vents made by rodents operating under the snowpack, where otherwise carbon dioxide accumulates. Foxes sometimes hunt voles by listening at vent holes, then suddenly diving through the snow, paws first. Creatures that operate under the snow are called subnivean.

Snotsicles are the ice that forms in the whiskers around my nose and mouth and that slips off satisfyingly with a simple tug of the lip. I got this word from a friend's teenager, who thought she was insulting me.

Needacaulks are those tidy drifts of snow on the floor of the livingroom after a windy night.

Snowbuff is what you get in winter - big muscles from skiing, shoveling, firewood - a Maine winter the best gym in the world, though there's no TV, and no guy at the next Stairmaster to chat up.

Snowcaps: everything gets a snowcap when the snow falls fine over a windless night. Our cement Buddha in the garden dons several nice ones before disappearing altogether for the winter, and never loses his beatific smile.

Mailboxity is the condition of constant concern for the mailbox - Mainers have a thousand solutions - my own box is on a little trestle I lift and carry out of harm's way till the storm is over, unless the mail is about to come, a chancy game: will the mail carrier or the plow come first? (The Town of Farmington plow drivers, it must be said, are excellent, pride themselves on never hitting a box-once when mine got hit the driver stopped by the next day to apologize and help straighten it out).

Snowchimes are simply wind chimes left out to accumulate ice, so each blizzard has its own muted song.

Snowdration are the drinks that the year-round birds manage in coldest winter-one often sees chickadees hanging upside-down off an icicle tip, head cocked, waiting patiently to suckle the next drip to form (a goldfinch had a different method, would rest on the roof briefly, then fly down to the icicle, hold himself steady as he could, flapping outrageously in front of his droplet just long enough for a sip). Mourning doves pick up graupel and sleet like it's birdseed, very delicately crunch the grains one at a time in their beaks for moisture.

Roofer Madness is when deep snow slides off all our rooflines slow as a glacier, curling at the brink for hours, then falling in Snow Bombs that drop with terrifying thuds at night, or in Roofalanches, when all the snow goes at once, and the living room windows are covered: instant night, or Prowlers, small snow bombs that sound like footsteps and scare the babysitters.

Ice Fangs are formed when slow-sliding roof snow pushes icicles at a malicious angle inward toward the house, looking from indoors as if some great creature has chomped down.

Tectonic Plates form in spring after wet snows freeze on top of the snowpack and crack into huge sections - as the weather warms, the cracks get bigger and bigger till there's nowhere to walk.

Guggenheim Museum is my technical name for a certain winter cloud that stacks up in incrementally larger layers into the heavens (in non-technical terms these are orographic clouds, formations of stratus, this particular type called lenticularis).
Sap snow comes in April, a wet, heavy snow after many thaws. The maples start awake.

Snow gnats are real bugs, white angels that float up in clouds toward spring from snowbanks.

Renaissance is simply the reemergence of lawn chairs and picnic table and blueberry bushes and finally Buddha himself, head first, smiling as always.

Bill Roorbach shovels snow, wipes snotsicles, and suffers acute mailboxity as he writes essays along Temple Stream, Farmington.

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