My Own Personal Sense of Snow

The other night, out of morbid boredom with the more educational pursuits like reading, I Googled "why we love snow" and was presented with a list of sites, the writers of which waxed poetical about everything from skiing and snowboarding to snow days to its beauty.  Try Googling "why do people love snow," on the other hand, and the list of sites provided a, shall we say, shifted focus.  A lot of the bellyache-rs seem to come from the UK, which might make sense considering the storms they had last year coupled with the fact that they all drive little cars that more resemble the plastic, remote control variety than anything else (except for the country set who drive Land Rovers -- I know it's true because that's what they drive in British mysteries). One Yahoo Answers UK and Ireland user posed the question, why do people love snow so much?  The thought of people loving actually depressed her.  Seriously? I said to myself, she has problems (and I hastened to agree with myself).  Many users responded that they thought it was because people could get a day off school or work.  Others said it was rare and beautiful.  Still others called the people who liked it idiots.  But the question remains, answerable for some, inconceivable for others, why do we love snow?

Anyone who knows me, knows this:  I love snow.  More specifically, I love it when it snows. Understanding this, it should come as no surprise that I was elated yesterday by the season's first real snowfall.  Of course, it amounted to only an inch or two by the end of the day, but, still, I was happy to see it come.  Inevitably, much of my time at work was spent staring out the large front windows of the store, just watching it drift down. (I was also watching the crazy guy across the street trying to mount his own personal protest against the local branch of Wells Fargo while wearing a V for Vendatta mask, which suddenly struck me as an alarmingly bad idea when the police arrived. Anyway...) Part of the fun of working in an outdoor store is that I'm not the only one who, from time to time, has  to rattle myself back to an awareness of what is happening inside on days such as these.  Not all of my co-workers love winter and its weather, but enough of us do.

Some of the Yahoo Answers users touched on a very basic reason for loving the snow: sentimentality. Ah yes, that hearkening back to childhood and all the promise of the first snow flurries. The problem with early snowfall, like yesterday's, is that it doesn't last too long.  Today, much of what fell yesterday has melted and, by now, turned to ice.  But more is falling, even as I type.  Whenever it snows at night I am put in mind of my childhood anxiety about winter weather.  I can remember going to bed, knowing that I could potentially rise to several inches of snow in the morning, or to mud and grass that looked like someone had come along and scattered powdered sugar here and there.  I would lay in bed positively nervous about the outcome, popping up from time to time, pressing my face against the window or running downstairs to flick on the deck light just to be sure that it hadn't stopped.  I would reassure myself that every flake in the air would land on the ground and it wasn't going to stop that instant, but then I would consider how quickly such an insignificant skiff of snow could vanish and the anxiety would come back.

Well, having established that I was basically an unstable child and that I haven't changed much, I would like to proceed with what I'm sure will be a far more enlightening and meaningful discussion of snow.  How can any discussion of snow be enlightening and meaningful, you ask?  Good question, one I don't have an answer to because this is completely off the cuff.  BUT I'm sure I can find a way to tie all of this into a heartwarming Thanksgiving message or an allegory on the pitfalls of plastic surgery. No promises, though. I will say that I am always shocked by the number of people who hate snow.  They positively abhor it!  How is that even possible, I wonder.  Even when I was a child it seems there were little nine-year-old naysayers who didn't like being cold and wet.  Okay, cold and wet on the one hand, snowmen, snow forts, snowball fights, snow angels, snow snacks, snow sledding, snow shoeing, snow skiing on the other.  No competition.

As an adult, however, I understand it better.  Snow, especially when it's falling and building up fast, can create painful driving conditions.  Last year I had to drive over Snoqualmie Pass in a snow storm.  First time in my life not being able to be a passenger and sleep through the ordeal.  It was insane!  And people would not slow down!  According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (http://nsidc.org/snow/) hundreds of people die in the US each year in snow-related deaths, traffic accidents in large.  So, yes, I get the hazard there. But that also side-steps the necessity we have of snow. Way back in 1995, Cullen Murphy wrote an article for The Atlantic called "In Praise of Snow."  In it he observes that "[s]now is a commodity we usually remember for either the pleasure it offers or the disruptions it causes."  He goes on to point out that often we overlook the necessity of snowfall, particularly in the mountains and especially the American West, to provide for our both our agricultural irrigation and "urban life."  Murphy also points out that, "[w]orldwide, at least a third of all the water used for irrigation comes from snow.  In the western United States the figure is about 75 percent."

I think most people in Central Washington are aware of the importance snow plays in the lives of our communities.  I certainly remember several years when farmers and ranchers had to worry about drought because the snow pack in the mountains didn't measure up (ha ha).  I think it's important to remember this aspect of winter weather, but I don't think that will stop people from disliking it.  Looking through the NSIDC website, it becomes obvious that people have always struggled with snow.  It won't come as any surprise that early settlers in the American colonies had to face shortages of food and fuel during the winter months.  As time went on, of course, settlers became generations of citizens of the US who learned how to better handle snowy conditions, creating sleighs with runners instead of wheels and stockpiling coal, wood, and food for the long months.  

But onwards and upwards, we continue to try and control the weather.  And I think that part of our dynamic relationship with snow is our desire for ultimate control over our lives, and snow represents a hindrance to that. Take the travelers on Snoqualmie last year, and every year, who couldn't be bothered to slow down for weather.  I found myself wanting to roll down my car window and yell into the blizzard, "Respect the snow! Respect it, you #*$&%! idiots!" (That is actually how I swear, in case you're wondering.)

As Murphy points out. if snow isn't a hindrance, it's an opportunity for recreation or even metaphor: "We call upon snow, too, for its utility as metaphor: symbol of purity, uniformity, isolation, protection, transience."  I see exactly what he means.  Over and over again it is used in all of these ways, as all of these things. Google (again with the Googling) "snow symbolism in literature" and WikiAnswers will tell you that in literature, snow is a symbol of death.  Okay, I suppose, but isn't that a bit too tidy for the literary world. If I remember correctly from my distant, and, yes, foggy, days of study, symbolism may be presented in two ways: one, as a universal symbol with a suggestion of meaning that can be lifted out of a work like a kernel; two, as a symbol which becomes specific to a particular work. Snow seems iconic as death: think C.S. Lewis's antagonist in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, where Narnia is always in winter, but Christmas never comes.  Think, too, of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Snow Queen," in which the Snow Queen succeeds in abducting Kai only after he has had a piece of the evil troll's mirror embedded in his eye and where Gerda succeeds in freeing him from the icy castle only after she reminds him of her love. But beyond this are far more complex examples of snow as symbol in literature. Murphy himself points to James Joyce's short story "The Dead," at the end of which, Gabriel's (one of the main characters) "soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Snow as equalizer, perhaps?  Or Gabriel's bleak recognition that he too would one day be in the graveyard with those dead. It may even symbolize new life, a fresh start for Gabriel -- but I'm no James Joyce expert. Bring up the website companion to How to Read Literature Like a Professor and they'll tell you that on the one hand snow is "cold, stark, inhospitable, inhuman, death," but it's also "clean, pure, playful" (Foster, Nelson http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/assignments/professor/professor.html --just to cover my bases).  All of these ideas add to the complexity of this quite simple weather phenomena, which, like most things, is not simple after all.

Perhaps, for me, it isn't so complicated though.  Perhaps it is nothing more than a memory of those wonderful late night snowfalls; of playing in the the front yard with my sister, dashing behind hastily constructed forts to hide from passing cars; of family ski trips; of making the slickest, fastest sled run with my siblings; of the taste of it.  Maybe, too, it's the utter, unbroken silence that comes with a snowfall.  Perfect stillness, and nothing but myself and the soundless earth settling down around me.