“Snowflakes are some of nature’s most fragile things, yet look at what they can do when they stick together.” — Unknown
The sky today is a sharp, clear blue unbroken by clouds, and the sun is shining. Yet, it’s snowing, but not in the general sense of the word. The trees are merely relinquishing their hold on the snow that gathered there in the most recent fall, that crept into the creases of withered oak leaves and frosted the upsides of branches and that the wind is now knocking down.
It was more pronounced yesterday as I walked along the ATV trail across the road from where I live, as the wind gusts were stronger and the tall pines that grow there hadn’t shed their white shawls. Down it came in sparkling showers all around me, slanting across the trail and soundlessly greeting the ground, fallen trees and other snowy patches. And it occurred to me then that of all the beautiful things in nature that announce their arrival with song or sound, snow is one of the few that does not communicate at all, for it has no need to.
Birds sing and rain taps and patters along the eaves during a shower. Dried leaves rustle in the same wind that sets the tops of the tallest pines sighing, and foxes bark in the night. Pond water grunts and groans as it both freezes and thaws, while bare tree trunks cry out as they rub against each other in a gale. Yet, the snow, like flowers and new leaves in the spring, makes not a sound as it insinuates itself into our wintry lives. It is enough that it is, that it alters life, sets us along a different course, and needs no other introduction beyond that.
A snowfall, be it from tree branches or the clouds themselves, is not unlike the dancing and cavorting of fairies, wee ice crystal entities that twirl along air currents flashing their gem-encrusted frocks for all who care to see. Their brief lives are spent in the realm of magic and mystery, for how could something so beautiful, so intricate, so complex, have so little to say and so little time to say it? Yet, that is the life of snowflakes, those intriguing little things that gather into compact mounds of white fluff yet all too briefly regain their individual identities when blown from the tree limbs and dead foliage, joining others in a dance that even has a role in the choreography of a very popular holiday musical production.
Winter in this part of the world offers many such productions, from light dustings to complete white-outs, with their intermissions taking the form here and there of milder air, cloudless skies, and snow melting into icicles outside doors and windows; and it will persist thus until the dancers have worn themselves out and become no more than the memory of delicate white lace tatted across the landscape.
And so, for the next few months, as it has done for centuries in these northern reaches, it will continue until nature once again lifts her tousled, leafy head from her snowy pillow one April morning and loudly proclaims, “All right, winter. We’ve had enough of you for another year.”
— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at rachell1950@yahoo.com.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
