The speaker remembers a small-town avalanche that destroyed an empty shack and the schoolhouse but spared the children, who were home eating boiled peas and wanting to play outside. From that evening on, the town has no school of its own; students travel twelve miles to the next town. There’s a balance here between absurd luck and quieter loss. People can’t quite describe the noise the snow made—so loud, so long, so “sustained, patient, and terrible”—so they shrink it down to a flat phrase: “That was really something, that was.” That restraint gives the poem a wry, almost haunted mood. By the end, the avalanche’s meltwater becomes a kind of descendant, slipping down the mountain toward San Francisco Bay to “continue their education,” as if the snow itself is still moving through the world, carrying the town’s interrupted schooling with it.
Avalanche — Summary
In my hometown, an avalanche ran over an empty shack, crossed the highway, crushed the schoolhouse. The children were all home eating boiled peas, scratching themselves, wanting to go outside in the snow once more before bedtime. That evening’s event ended schooling in the town. Children ever since have traveled twelve miles to go learn in the next town.
Cameras remembered the sight of snow versus building. People would recall the sound without describing it. They couldn't go around talking about how loud snow could be—how long the sound lasted, how it was sustained, patient, and terrible. No, better to say, “That was really something, that was.”
So far, all descendants of the avalanche have stayed on the mountain, melted, slipped into the river, and traveled toward San Francisco—there to continue their education in the Bay.