Deep Snow Soothes The Soul

Tent, Front Yard, Anchorage, AK

If I am to live comfortably in Alaska, there needs to be snow on the ground.  I much prefer deep snow to bare ground in the depths of winter.

Snow enhances the beauty of Anchorage in many ways.   Bare branches are softened and made less ominous by a blanket of white.  Moon light strikes the snow and is bent and refracted in all directions leaving little in shadow.   Monsters cannot hide when the moon waxes fullest.  Objects are illuminated in a royal blue making them magical to behold.

Sounds are hushed by snow, or rather the vibrations that comprise sound are absorbed into a deep layer of snowflakes.  Even normally loud noises such a planes flying overhead, or garbage trucks lumbering down the city streets are muffled.  The ears are soothed as the snow subdues the most jarring of noises.  One can stand out of doors, close the eyes, and imagine you are far away from the center of the city even when you live right on it's outskirts.  All sounds gain a mysterious quality, and one must listen carefully to catch fine details.  Voices can seem to come from many directions at once.

Only when snow is snatched up by the wind can one fully appreciate the power and diversity of the atmosphere.  Funnels and wind shears may be seen by the naked eye as the snow binds itself to air and is flung about carelessly.  One may witness the glory of air, the way wind goes where it pleases, moves what it likes, and is limited only by its own strength.  And when the winds cease, the landscape has been rearranged in a fashion to be envied by any landscaping enthusiast.  The hapless homeowner grabs their shovel and goes about the business of taming the mounds of snow into piles and paths knowing full well that the wind may well return to undo all their efforts.  If one is willing to be awed, one cannot help but admire the effect even as one curses the strain to arms and back.

Snow in ample quantity provides all that is needed to construct a snow fort.  Some may choose to make an igloo type with bricks carefully constructed and stacked into walls and ramparts, walls and roofs.  Others may opt to create a snow dome, but this takes patience.  Either way, snow may be molded into nearly any shape that the mind can imagine.  I haven't made snow fort in a decade, but this year as the snow continues to accumulate, I may well have to put my hand to it.  Snow forts provide the most amazing sort of fun. 

One can ski down a hill in the snow, grab snow shoes and trod through the snow in any direction,  strap on your favorite pair of cross country ski and do the same.  Snow makes all sorts of recreating possible.  The same area of ground could not do the same if laid bare of its white, and chilly mantle.

I love the snow, and prefer it to barren ground even if it limits my mobility around town.  I am childlike in the snow.  I can see possibilities in the piles of snow.  The snow allows me to forget what lies beneath its blanket, and reform it into what I most desire it to be.   I can be comfortable in the snow if I put on enough of and the right type of clothes.  I can never get cool enough in the heat even if I strip down to my bare essentials. 

I burst into this world amidst warm and water.  As I grow older, I grasp that I may leave it cold and dry as the bones of trees in winter.   Near the end of my life, during my winter, I would love to gather my friends and family around as if they could form a mantle of snow to cover me.  Cold.  Yes, but protected.  The mantle will transform me, and the light of God's moon would be reflected off of them, and nothing around me will be in shadow.