I hope everyone has recovered from this week�s massive snowstorm. I guess the forecasters got this one right (see my January 25 column on not worrying about storms until they arrive). It was a whopper.

If you are deeply into snow sports, this blanket of fresh precipitation probably means a heavenly day shooshing the slopes, hitting the trails or shredding the halfpipe. If you prefer to wait out winter weather by sitting nice and cozy inside, you are probably wondering what could possibly be good about more snow�especially this much snow�at this point in the year.

Well, the groundhog warned us. Six more weeks of winter. And here we are, shoveling the sidewalks and driveways, and slipping and sliding down roads just two weeks from the arrival of spring.

Of course, "spring" here in the north country doesn�t really arrive until that other "m" month, but seeing it on the calendar gives us hope. Hope that the crocuses will appear and the robins return and the grass grow green once again.

Meanwhile, the world outside my window is very, very, very white.

Sunday night I got up around 3:30 a.m. and checked the storm�s progress. There was a veil of snow outside the window, making the house across the street seem ghostly. I opened the door expecting to hear nothing but muffled stillness. Instead, I heard the faint tinkling of wind chimes. It made me think of jingle bells.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way . . . Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh.

Snowstorms wouldn�t be so bad if we didn�t have to drive in them. If the car hadn�t been invented, maybe we�d be sleighing to work. Imagine listening merrily to the sound of tinkling bells and the crunch of hooves on snow instead of tuning into the traffic/weather/accident reports on the radio.

Mostly, winter driving boils down to going slow enough, but not too slow. Slow enough to see the other guy coming, but not so slow that the other guy runs into you.

Weather-related fender benders, even when they don�t result in damage to life or limb, cause many headaches. A split-second collision results in thousands of dollars in damage.

I can�t imagine what a ten-sleigh pile-up would look like.

Just hear those sleigh bells jingle-ing, ring ting ting-a-ling too; C�mon it�s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you.

I sometimes wish cars could convert to snowmobiles (a modern-day sleigh) this time of year. Think about how much money and effort, salt and sand we could save if we just let the roads accumulate with snow as we traveled safely on top.

I�ve also wondered when technology will make it possible for roads to be laced with heating elements�like the units you sometimes see on roofs to prevent ice dams--so that snow melts on contact and disappears into harmless vapor.

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane, snow is glistening . . . Walkin� in a winter wonderland.

Monday afternoon I went out in the curtain of falling snow with my daughter. It was too powdery to pack into snowballs, but it was still fun to throw and kick and tramp through. I considered making an angel but it would have taken so much effort to get back up again that the angel would have been a formless blob.

Have you ever wondered who made the first snowman? Think about it. Three balls of snow piled on top of one another, with coal for facial features and branches for arms. Would you think to do that if you�d never seen it before?

My favorite movie snowman has always been the one voiced by Burl Ives in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. The way he sashayed through the snow, leaving a faint trail behind him, seems to me to be the way a real snowman would walk�not like Frosty, with his legs that came from nowhere.

Baby, it�s cold outside.

People seem to complain more about the cold when it snows, but of course the clouds keep things warmer than when it�s sunny out. When you look out and see snow falling, you know you don�t have to worry about freeze-drying your nasal passages.

Winter lasts a long time in this part of the country. It�s too bad some of the best wintery weather songs are used up by the end of December. We could sure use them right about now.