I find snow to be a wonderful, beautiful thing. I tend to be easily impressed by any of Mother Nature’s flourishing strokes across this earthen canvas, but there’s something about the crystalline fragility of a flagrant flock of frost that never fails to catch my eye or my breath. You see, it’s all random. Those specific water droplets that make up each flake just happen to be located near each other in the atmosphere, they just happen to coalesce into a form heavy enough to fall and they just happen to fall in a swathe of ground that is cold enough to allow them to live frozen and secure. It really is a miracle that we get to see these works of art at all.
Some of these snowflakes fall in the countryside. Maybe some land on the back of a goat. Maybe some find their way to the smooth surface of a glassy pond which, if frozen, would be vastly more preferable to the melting heat of the furry animal. These inanimate flakes have no choice in this predestined journey. They fall because they were meant to, and they land in either a safe zone or a melt zone. It’s too bad that some are manifested in these hostile environments, but that’s just the way things are. The unfortunate don’t last much longer than the landing. They land, melt, and are forgotten. I suppose we could move the snow to a colder location so it could survive, but that would be silly. It’s going to melt, that’s kind of a forgone conclusion at this point. What’s more, to move it would mean to take the place of the pre-existing cold snow, and that would mess with the order of things (which we can’t have). So we’ve established that we will not move the snow. Ever. Not for any reason.
Snow gets moved sometimes.
For instance, when snow falls in the city, shovels start scraping. Blowers start tossing and disseminating. Plows start roaring. Snow gets in the way. Of course, business must go on as usual, and we as a species have developed a series of efficient and innovative methods for clearing our paths and allowing us to get to work and get our jobs done. What I meant was that snow does not get moved for any reason that involves the benefit of the snow itself.
I love walking through the winter woods. One of my favorite sights is the sun’s glare off the pristinely uniform blanket of white. I love the way the frozen layer curves over bumpy rocks and sagging shrubs. I love how some of the trees’ heavier branches accumulate a layer of their own. Some people curse winter and see, instead of this beauty, a barren graveyard of all things warm and green. This is a sentiment I don’t understand at all. Sure, the summer months are great, but after two months it gets old, and the next season is due. Without the three other seasons I could never fully appreciate the fourth. Each have their own unique beauties and contributions to my contentment.
As this cycle runs its course, all of the snow melts. The melting zones spreads across what was once a safe zone and the full blanket sinks from pure white to muddy brown. Once the whole mess is just liquid, it is literally impossible to distinguish from any of these flakes. It’s almost as if it was meaningless to categorize them in the first place. They all are formed, and they all die. Is it possible that the safe flakes want to know that there are flakes in danger? Do the flakes feel better to know they are safer than others? What if all the flakes were all safe?
I don’t know.
