1. Concentrating on the particulars. Each snowflake falls uniquely designed, each springs its own one-of-a-kind crown of icy sprigs. Every child who learns this truth weighs it against her own experience seeing the gutters, gullies, sidewalks, fallen leaves and lawns wiped into a plane of undivided white. Every child will hold out for a moment against the beauty and charm of this idea. And every one will accept it, as the inevitable proof of his or her own person. And cherish it. And grip the fact like a talisman against the world’s malevolent homogeneity. And, years later, even if the child has grown into an adult, assumed the mantle of suits and skirts and ties and hose, borrowed the language of us and them, and followed in the well-worn path of his parents into becoming a parent, he preserves this strange knowledge within him, somewhere at his core. The child strokes a thumb against a fingertip. And knows it to be true.

2. Moving linearly. In the west, during the 1800s, settlers would tie their barns to their houses, using the rope as a guide during “white-out” blizzards. Such a scheme is employed by the father (“Pa” Ingalls) in the series Little House. During the same time period wagon trains moved across the continent in ruts so deep they still may be viewed paralleling each other across the plains.

3. Furnishing the interior. A single man, alone in Vermont, stumbled onto the snowflakes’ secret. Wilson A. Bentley in the early 1880s began photographing single flakes, in the dead of winter, outside his house. Each photograph captured a single flake; each was a symmetrical window into his soul. According to the magazine Smithsonian (January, 2005), the institute of the same name rejected his offers to donate these photographs. He persevered. And, sold plates to colleges and schools. He found them homes.

4. There are as many words for snow as there are stitches. One to describe its heft, another to describe its density, another its weight on the shoulder, another its age, another its color, another its stage of dissolving, another its brightness, another its wetness, another its flavor, another its warmth, another its coarseness, another its silkiness, another its usefulness in binding, another its history. But these words do not belong to me.

5. Establishing a rhythm. The pace of shovels. The fall of boots. The drone of plows completing the clearance of streets, one lane at a time. The squeals of children, let out of school early. The silence that mounts with each flake. Recall the Donners’ diaries that keep careful note of the increasing depth of the snow burying them. As their hunger towered above, a white, rasping ghost, they are said to have worn their shame.

6. Deciphering the stitch of birds. They fly in one direction only to suddenly dip and pivot and return. They do this, together, as if they had become a single enormous being. Ancient Romans believed such flock patterns could reveal the will of the gods. Whole schools were devoted to their study and elucidation. Historians took pains to remark on their patterns.

And, despite the cold air, that cannot even support water molecules, there they are. Waddling on the ground, jumping into the wind.

7. Consider it a rough draft of winter. The streets and houses and sidewalks will shed the irregular folds and threads of water. The hard skin of concrete, scabbed with gum, will re-emerge within days.

8. Weigh time. The emptiness of the universe. The relativity of time’s passage. How this afternoon will be over by tomorrow, and you will not remember enough of it to fill five minutes of conversation, but, nevertheless, the afternoon will hang down from your lap.

8 bis. The demands of lassitude. The futility of shoveling now, when the wind is so strong and the snow’s still coming. The necessity of languor. And its pleasure, the absoluteness of its pleasure as you follow its thread. From the outside in. So empty-headed thoughts emerge between your hands as pearls and seeds.

9. Ponder the lack of any end point. A white scarf 800 miles long, wrapping the eastern seaboard. The arbitrary determination it is done. The sun threads through the clouds.

10. The appeal of utility, a particularly American trait. 

11. The tranquility of watching snow melt. Becomes infuriating; it burns when you realize that once again you’ll fit into a sweater someone else has manufactured, shoulder the need to crowd on trains and finish the day squelched under the dreary slush of a million identical footfalls. And then you draw your needles from your bag and cast your thoughts into beginning again.

copyright,  © 2006 Eric Reymond