Where has all the sparkle gone?

By Gillian Rozicer
Washington

Matted leaves, mangy grass, snapped branches, mud hardly worthy of being called brown: What has the snow given up?

It’s not just the craters called potholes we’re left with weeks after the blizzard of 2010; it’s the dull and drab landscape we have to look at. It’s a landscape washed out enough and gritty enough to make even the painter Andrew Wyeth, with his spare style, recoil. And there’s a wetness that gives no hope of ever drying out. I slog around a bit in Rock Creek Park with my Labrador retriever. Even his usual camo-brownness stands out against the muck. There’s no sepia, no sap green, no Indian yellow. The sky is the color of sour milk. Cracked clay pots, crushed azaleas, slippery stones, what else?

I wouldn’t go so far as to want the snow back, but it sure did sparkle.