I got my wish. We had a white Christmas down at the Osage County, Kansas farm. The ice pellets that I drove home in on Christmas Eve turned into snow by supper time. The wind howled, first from the north and then from the west. The cedars to the north and west of the house protected us from the bitter brunt and contributed to the substantial drifts that greeted me on Christmas morning. It was a glorious morning – still blowing and still snowing.

In spite of the wind and cold, it was a lovely white Christmas morning and I thought it fitting to celebrate by giving the animals an extra ration of feed and tossing an extra 1500-pound round bale of hay to the hogs – how they love to tear those bales apart, eating and sleeping the day away. I also figured the white Christmas chores would be a lot easier to complete if I didn’t need to trudge through knee-deep drifts, and the footing would be firmer if I bladed and shoveled out the gates. So I decided to trade the loader-equipped Kubota tractor’s utility bucket for the purpose-built snow-bucket. I’d need the tractor later to move big round bales of hay – so there wouldn’t be any harm in pushing a little snow first, right?

Wrong!

Perplexed as I was that quick-attaching the snow bucket to the tractor’s loader didn’t go too quick, I was preparing to make the first lane-clearing pass when I noticed that the tractor’s right front tire was not only flat, but it was only partially on the rim.

Yikes!

No wonder the loader-arms were uneven as I presented them to the snow bucket – neatly stored in a level place.

Suddenly, firing up the Kubota for some white-Christmas morning seat time didn’t look like that great of an idea.

I knew what to do – but I didn’t really want to have to do it.

Using the loader as a jack, I raised the tractor’s front axle and removed the offending wheel and horsed it back to the shop. The tire went onto the rim with only a mild sweat, in spite of the fact that it was stiff from the cold. The tire’s beads swelled out to the rim sufficiently that it sealed, once I wrapped and tightened two binder straps around the tire’s edges and pounded on the tread with a mallet. A few minutes with the compressor pumping high-pressure air into the works and soon enough, the wheel and tire were ready to go back on the tractor. The entire process went so well that it was a little like magic.

With only a half hour interruption, the day developed into a white Christmas celebration that exceeded any of my expectations. The animals seemed pleased, my loved ones seemed pleased and I was pleased.

I'll admit it, I like snow. I like snow on the ground at Christmas. I like to spend time out in that snow. It's like magic to me.

When I was a kid, up in North Dakota, snow meant that we could build great forts of the frozen stuff and toss icy missiles at one another; it also meant we could build snowmen or Jackalopes -- magical creatures complete with antlers shaped from branches we collected from the lilac thicket. Snow also meant that hikes on the Missouri River bluffs with my entire family, or down on the wooded bottoms with just my dad, would be especially fun because of all the animal tracks.

One particularly white Christmas season, the family nursery business was closed and my dad was off for several days in a row. One of those days he took me for a hike through the riverine forest along the Missouri River, south of Bismarck. By then, I could recognize deer tracks, rabbit tracks, and an assortment of smaller rodent tracks and snow tunnels. What I wasn't prepared for that day was to see the largest rabbit tracks I had ever experienced -- I was not yet 5 years old. I recall spying the tracks and being amazed at their size -- dad didn't seem too impressed. I concluded that rabbit tracks of that size could be made by a single creature: the Easter Bunny. In fact I was so secure with that conclusion that it took me more years than normal to accept that the Easter Bunny was a myth.

That same particularly white Christmas hike was memorable for a bunch of other reasons. I was impressed with the fact that at lunchtime my dad stopped, gathered a few handfuls of Burr Oak branches and created a fire with matches and tinder he pulled from the pocket of his bright red, cotton-shelled parka. But that trick was nothing compared with the thermos of hot chocolate and package of hotdogs and buns that appeared from another of the parka's pockets.

We sat on a log and roasted dogs, using only jackknife-sharpened sticks and the buns themselves as utensils. We didn't talk much during that snowy repast although I remember thinking my dad's red parka was magic because cool stuff just kept coming out of its pockets. Upon reflection, I think the magic was simply in the pure, unadulterated father-son moments we spent together.

Years later as a young adult and a not-so-young adult I spent several white Christmas seasons in Wisconsin on a pair of cross-country skis with a tent and other camping gear strapped to my back. My dad joined me on one of those excursions. We saw plenty of animal tracks that year. We chuckled about the Easter Bunny evidence I saw back in North Dakota and concluded that the tracks were created by a Jackrabbit; those tracks really weren't that big after all. In spite of brutal sub-zero temperatures on that trip, there was plenty of magic in gliding for miles silently through the wilderness.

A winter storm warning  is in effect for my part of Kansas this Christmas Eve day -- there are similar warnings over much of the region. I know that many folks are anxious about travelling. I'm lucky because I get to spend the next few days at my Osage County farm. I am hoping for a white Christmas and the magic the day will bring.