Snow

[vaneramos]

androkles asked to hear about snow. What does a writer do but go out and experience something before he writes about it?

Dad was on the phone this afternoon telling me it's going to melt soon. I decided: if I'm going to tell about it I better get out there now. Sure enough, the temperature was hovering just above freezing. Along Kingsmill Avenue I could hear water dripping from the gutters.

We all know what it means when there's powder on the ground and the temperature hovers around freezing: snowball weather. Unfortunately I couldn't find anyone in the park who looked eager for a snowball fight. I could only think of one way to get into it.




Packing snow feels like fire in the bare hand, and softly abrasive. It has a refreshing taste, almost metallic. Cynics will tell me that's air pollution, but it tastes the same up North where the air is even cleaner than Guelph.

Snow is an effective heat and sound insulator. It prevents the soil from losing too much heat in winter, protecting plant roots and hibernating animals from freezing. It also muffles sound. In forests where deep snow mounds against trees on every side, the air sounds dead on a still day. If you dig a cave into a deep snowdrift, no sound passes in or out. It all gets absorbed.

When I walked today through the powder snow that fell in the park yesterday, distant sounds like the drone of the Owens Corning plant were muted. The loudest sound was the crunch of my own boots on the path.

Everybody says snow is white, and it's true, but that hardly expresses the colour of snow. Shadows, like the ones around the sides of a footprint, have a purplish cast, while the bottom of a print reflects the sky's brightness. On a clear morning these cool shadows contrast distinctly with the sun's golden flush.

Comments

[artricia.livejournal.com]

It prevents the soil from losing too much heat in winter, protecting plant roots and hibernating animals from freezing.

"Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers."
-T.S. Eliot, in "The Waste Land"

It's odd how there's something warm about snow. I miss coming home in the dark and the cold, getting home, turning the heat up from 64 to 68 (Fahrenheit, of course), gathering blankets, sweaters, hot drinks, etc., looking out the window at the snow, opalescent under the streetlights, and feeling very snuggled, nurtured and held and warm.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me of that beautiful quote. And what a wonderful image you created. I used to live in an apartment that had a nice overlook of a streetlight, and I loved watching the snow, "opalescent" in the wash of light underneath. Working here at my desk, I tend to overlook the onset of night. Suddenly it's dark, I'm turning on the lights and feeling hungry (and maybe a little lonely) and I forget what's happening outside. I go out sometimes, but a nighttime walk sometime soon would do me good, just for the sake of experiencing a winter night.

where's my camera moments

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Your photographs /have/ made an impression on me--just in case you needed to know that you're NOT just sending them out into the electronic void. This morning, while out walking the cat who owns me, I came around the corner of the house to what was my rose/snapdragon flowerbed this summer. All that's left now are two twiggy knuckly adolescent rose bushes and one frozen snapdragon silhouetted against the snow. My first thought was "Boy, I bet Van could make a really great photographic composition out of this...

Re: where's my camera moments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

My comment about feeling invisible did not relate to the online community as much as the people I know in "real life." I feel lucky to be able to share my creative work with people this way and have them respond, otherwise I think the well would dry up.

Re: where's my camera moments

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wasn't thinking so much of the issues of invisibility generally but specifically of your photographs--keep posting them!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It didn't have a crust. The temperature had been below freezing since the snow fell, so it stayed powdery and soft. When you walk on this stuff it compacts and makes a squeaky crunch, almost like the sound your teeth make if you grate them together (minus the clicking). If the air rises above freezing like it did yesterday afternoon, the surface turns to packing snow, which is even crunchier. It is moist, so you can easily pack it into a snowball. When the air is too cold, snow will not clump together into a ball, it just falls apart. After one or two mild days (or at least bright, sunny ones), the surface starts to melt and then freezes again at night. That's what forms the crust.

That paragraph has demonstrated most of our vocabulary of snow. Of course there are the kinds of snow that fall from the sky: snow, sleet, freezing rain, ice pellets and hail. But urbanites manage to avoid snow as much as they can, they don't really have to live with it except as an inconvenient thing filling their sidewalks and driveways. If we still had to go hunting and foraging, perhaps we would have a few words for different kinds of snow. If I lived in Nanavut, perhaps I could tell you how the Inuit came up with 100 different words for it, but I haven't a clue.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

Van, you sweet thing, I know this is an obvious comment to make, but you look like a TOTAL DOLL in those photos!!!!

Something about the white snow, your pale complexion, your red beard...it just SIZZLES.

Funny how photos taken on such a cold day in the middle of the snow can reel of HOTNESS.

xo Shimmer

Re: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Stop making me blush.

Red beard? I had to do a doubletake. The highlights do look awfully red in these pics, don't they? Really they're more dark blond.

[twillhead.livejournal.com]

You look cute with a beardful of snow! Those images ALMOST makes me appreciate the eight or so inches we have on the ground . . .

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

My appreciation for snow is growing.

[twillhead.livejournal.com]

Help me find the way! David loved the snow (he grew up in Arizona), and was a "snow spotter" for one of our local news weathermen. He helped rekindle an appreciation for snow within me, but without him, I only see stuff I have to shovel and try not to get killed in when I'm driving.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It comes from keeping a nature journal, and walking outdoors as regularly as possible. The closer I get to the land and the river, the more I realize winter is an essential and exciting part of it. On cold days I am hesitant to step outside, but once I reach the park my feet keep drawing me in search of more beauty.

[twillhead.livejournal.com]

You sound like Walt Whitman.