Reflections in the Snow

2011 January snowfall

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind,
As man’s ingratitude.

—William Shakespeare

I’m one of those weird people that loves Winter. From Christmas Eve on I anticipate the first full-blown snowfall when everything in sight is covered with downy white; if January proceeds and we still don’t have a substantial snowpack I begin to feel cheated. Well, last night we finally got some snow, not a truckload, but enough so that everything is covered with a soft layer of white down. I feel encouraged. Maybe there’s still time to to enjoy the wonders of a snow-covered earth for maybe six weeks, until the end of February at least.

Snow is one of the most dominant forces in the natural world; both a blessing and a burden to all living things. The symmetrical crystalline beauty of individual flakes is cause for wonder, and the melded softness of innumerable six-sided flakes shrouding the surface of the earth reveals a beauty of form that remains hidden during the rest of the year.

It’s a frigid night. The moon casts purple shadows of tangled, naked branches in a wonderful abstract pattern across the freshly laid mantle of blue snow. An owl hoots in the distance. The sound hangs, suspended indefinitely in the frozen air. A cottontail appears from under a blue spruce, hops a few feet, stops, looks around tentatively, then ducks back into the protection of the snow-burdened tree. It leaves an after-image like a frozen shadow on the snow.

The clock on the courthouse a mile away is chiming ten. So clear and sharp, it slices through the crystal air: pure unfettered sound. It had to be a night such as this when Tennyson wrote, “Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky . . . . Ring, happy bells, across the snow . . . ” and began to emerge from his grief for his friend.

The stars appear so close one could reach out and grab a fistful. A gazillion more are revealed sparkling in the chaste snow. This fundamental beauty makes one think of a timeless universe in which all things converge, and all things are possible.

Deer in the backyard

Rabbits still nibble perennials in the herb garden and gray squirrels spiral up tree trunks and jump from bare branch to bare branch, euphoric in their mating rites. Each day they join cardinals and blue jays feasting with chickadees and sparrows at the many neighborhood feeding stations. All are stalked by the neighbor’s cats looking for their desert. Deer wander through our backyard in the middle of town desperate for food. Each creature leaves its signature on the tabula rasa, soft, subtle brush strokes like a Japanese painting, that reveal the mystery of winter survival.

In the morning it’s possible to read the calligraphy written in the early hours. What creatures ventured out for the paltry provisions they could glean from nature’s lean larder. A brisk morning walk, accompanied by the raucous blue jay’s harsh warning call and the moan of trees responding to arctic temperatures and the rising sun, lays bare a unique story.

While snow covers and shelters, it also reveals and exposes.

Those who live with snow a major portion of the year perceive even the most subtle differences characterized by the type of crystal involved. All snow crystals are colorless. The whiteness we perceive is produced by the reflection and refraction of light from the many minute surfaces of the crystals. Large fluffy flakes, each one different they tell me, descend at about three and a half miles an hour, roughly six times slower than a raindrop. Imagine, lazily drifting like a butterfly wing, oblivious to gravity, transported by the wind, simply giving oneself up to the forces of nature, chance alone deciding where and when to land. Imagine!

Emily enjoys the snow

When we were kids, poor as church mice, we made snowshoes out of evergreen branches and tied them to our feet with anything we could find, from an old piece of rawhide to a discarded scarf. Then we trudged into the woods to explore a frosty, pristine world. Out of the magical white crystals we moulded whatever our imaginations conjured: snow men, snow dogs, snow dragons and knights. Often we played fox and geese with a large, meandering circle that went in and out of bare trees, around snow-softened rocks, over frozen streams.

Sometimes we chose sides and built forts, then pelted each other from our store of snowballs until it got too dark to see, or until we got too cold to continue. As we headed for home, our overwrought snowshoes, with “laces” broken and too frozen to tie anymore, lost their usefulness and tripped us mercilessly. So cold we could hardly feel our fingers and toes, our progress home slowed considerably as we spent precious moments laughing in snowdrifts, coming up with mouthfuls of the cold stuff that froze our lips, teeth, and cheeks.

Finally we’d toss the snowshoes aside and stumble home on numb feet, perhaps helped by a bright moon, and gathering a final batch of snow as we went for Mom’s special maple syrup bedtime treat.

Adult experiences in the snow are regretfully more sedate, though not necessarily less adventuresome. Feeding birds, shoveling walks, stoking the fire. Leisurely cross country skiing over deer paths, through golf courses, down tame enough snow-covered hills, and only occasionally, time to build a snow sculpture with a visiting grandchild. There is more time now to study the path of the wind in snowdrifts, intricate frost patterns on windows, and all manner of wildlife exerting their fundamental instincts of survival.

But I wonder if today’s sheltered and chauffeured youth get to experience Winter and a glorious snowfall as we did when we were children. And what memories are they storing for their golden years? Snow is an adventure that many in the world never get to experience: the touch, the smell, the navigation, the play, the quiet beauty of the landscape.

Snow blankets the earth

Winter is a time of keen awareness that even when the earth seems most lifeless and barren, there is still a vibrancy, an urgency that sifts and strains, that clarifies all life forms and leaves the earth better, stronger, purified for the spring to come.

A fresh snowfall heals the earth’s scars and reflects in its infinite crystals Winter’s cleansing rites.

 

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