In the middle of a round-the-country bike trip, I wake up to a White Christmas in North Carolina. I was reading the record of white Christmases in a small-town newspaper north of here. There have been about ten of them in the last hundred years, and they were all traces of snow, no accumulation.

I fell asleep to rain last night, as it had done all day. I woke in the night to the sharp sound of ice falling on the tent, like someone dropping tacks on a hard tile floor. Later on there was silence, and I woke to see the soft pattern of snow on the fly, and my first peeks outside show a dusting of snow on my secluded forest floor. After the steady racket of yesterday’s rain this is an odd silence, broken only by the scratching of my pen on the page and a few far-off birds calling.

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Today’s excursion was quite enjoyable, but very cold. I wonder if this weather is on the news back home. There is only a dusting of snow, but everything is covered in a thick layer of ice. Small icicles hang from stop signs, telephone wires, bushes, and houses. I stopped to talk to a guy out warming his truck up with his kids. This is the first white Christmas he can remember. They’ve had snow before, but never on Christmas that he can recall. Even if he’s wrong, that’s the important part. People don’t remember the last white Christmas, even if there was one. It makes today special. I watched his two little girls jumping up and down on the deck, fascinated by the snow and ice. They ran over to the trampoline and jumped all over it, snow and ice falling in bunches beneath them as they reveled. They ran off to explore another common object made extraordinary by its new coat. In the woods I saw a downed branch big enough to wreck my tent, but I couldn’t leave now if I wanted to. My bike is entombed in ice, all the moving parts frozen solid. The road is wet, but the white line, where I ride so much, is still slushy and icy in places.

I had been thinking this was a terrible day to be cooped up in a tent, but aside from moments of longing to be with my parents at the festive family gathering, it is actually not that bad. It leads to good reflection. Listening to the woods starting to melt around me, I realize I should be on the road again tomorrow. That life returns soon enough.

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I have just enough food for today. Lunch will be a couple granola bars, and dinner will be some hot dog rolls with mustard. I will feast at the next store I reach.

As the rain stops and the temperature stays just below freezing, nothing more falls. The only sound is the wind in the higher trees, and the clinking of ice-covered needles. It is a magical rare sound.