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.