We’re into March, but winter won’t quite let go of us yet. The forecast, however, is for temperatures that look like the arrival of the cavalry . . . like the coming of Gandalf with reinforcements to the battle of Helm’s Deep.

I awoke during the night and glanced out the window to see a swirl of white flakes. I was glad I’d pulled my car into the alley from the other direction and parked it facing downhill; that can be of critical importance when the alley gets snowy and icy. Waking during the night is nice. I enjoy knowing I have another few hours to sleep. One finds luxury where one can.

Well, it wasn’t a big snow. It was just a soft, wet blanket an inch or so deep. But it was enough to transform the landscape this morning into something otherworldly. In the gray half-light when I emerged from the short Stowe Tunnel, I couldn’t help but bask in the sight of the trunks, limbs, and branches, all limned in white, all feathery and ghostly against the twilight of the wooded hills. That was the first wonder.

The second came at lunch break. We trooped down from our work decks and exited the plant. Just across the narrow courtyard, behind the break trailer, is a huge building of corrugated metal, now unused — the relic of some former era of the recycling operation. In the morning when I arrive, I nearly always peer into it as I pass. There are gaping doorways, jagged holes, a “Keep Out” sign, and the just-visible shapes of stairways and platforms illuminated by shafts of light from the dilapidated roof. It’s a vast, dim cave where the rats might exercise their freedom of assembly and whisper together in nefarious rat-claves . . . a place where anything might happen. It’s the Moria of Greenstar — perhaps orcs are spawned there — who knows? Perhaps the lords of the plant delved too deeply there in their quest for aluminum and awoke things that ought not to be disturbed.

At any rate, as we came out of our newer plant for lunch, the snow — beyond sight on the high roof of this abandoned building — was melting. The sun was out, the sky was brilliant blue, and all the walkways were an ooze of mud and puddles. And from the edge of the corrugated roof poured cascades of water! Imagine it — the great wall, the face of this ruin, had become a tremendous waterfall! I stopped in my tracks for a long moment to admire it. The water flowed on and on in a seemingly endless sheet, a curtain of diamonds as long as a city block, dazzling in the sun, splashing in the mire, making a susurrus like a heavy rain out of a clear sky!

To get to the break room (different from the trailer), we all have to pass between pillars under one edge of this same roof, where it forms an open bay that can be driven through. (The plant owns, for hauling comingle, a behemoth of a truck that would never pass inspection for the road. It spews billowing clouds of oily exhaust and makes a frightful racket as it growls through this bay. Gizmo used to drive it, though he’s been gone for awhile. Yet he may be back — guys come and go, and many treat this place as a haven where you can always find work at the drop of a hat. I’ve heard that Gizmo is doing well.)

So, to enter this shadowy bay, we had to forge right through the waterfall. I stepped up to its foot, took a breath, and plunged ahead. If the water-gems pinged off my helmet, I hardly felt them — and somehow, I didn’t get wet.

And — further wonder — inside the murky drive-through cave, with the depths of the neglected building looming beyond the fissures in the far wall, melt-water was also streaming down through rusted holes in the roof — falling water in shafts. It was very much like being in some grand cavern admitting a river . . . quite a breathtaking sight!

Man makes buildings for his purposes. Time erodes them. Forests grow up through the bricks and cracked foundations of old Pittsburgh. Then come the light and the snow and the water to create extraordinary effects, momentary visions of the sublime. By the end of lunch break, the waterfall was over. But it had been there! I beheld it and walked through its shining gate.