Algernon Blackwood

“ With the exception of a fairly heavy fall just before Christmas everything that has since fallen from the sky⁠—below four thousand feet⁠—has been rain, or rainy sleet with a few flakes of snow mixed here and there in midair, enough to permit hope though hope as yet unfulfilled. Although a sprinkling of visions come out at the end of November and early in December expecting to find the winter already in full sway, the majority know that the real snow hardly comes before the New Year. ”

“ All over Switzerland it has been the same, east and west, north and south⁠—warm winds from the Atlantic, rain, fog, thaw, and only just enough frost at the resorts that lie above five thousand feet to provide a little inferior skating.
The disappointment of many hundreds has been keen, and the loss to hotels and purveyors of winter-sport articles unquestionably very large. For the great holiday rush is over now, and hundreds never put on their ski at all. The sleighs have hardly dared to show their runners; the peasants are doing all their carting still on wheels. ”

“ Now, at this very moment, writing in these last days of January at a height not far from four thousand feet, the sun blazes in a cloudless sky upon green fields and pine woods untouched by white, birds are singing, there are summery fleecy clouds just visible upon the distant Alps, and a mild southwest wind brings thoughts and feelings that belong to April. Spring is in the air. It seems absurd to talk of ski at all. ”