OP’s not complaining about too much detail. They specifically complained about overuse of metaphor and simile shutting down their imagination, which I kinda get.

In their example, the second half of the sentence is kinda visually confusing. It’s ambiguous if you’re supposed to see a house, or an old guy, or an old guy’s memories, or a blizzard.

Contrast it with @femicrat’s Tolkein quote, which is mostly concrete details stated with simple language, despite the poetic feeling you get from it. There’s only one simile, “Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight,” and it’s pretty unambiguous and easy to imagine. You know you’re supposed to see stones in the ground and not someone’s actual mouth and teeth.