We Have Killed Snow.

Isaac Moon ‘27

Snow comes in ephemerality, yet always appears and disappears on her own whim. She signals her arrival with minute signs:  hot breath can be seen in animation, past when grey clouds long to thunder from the sky. She hushes the lips of those breathing to a chatter, and she muffles the thunder that pridefully boomed only weeks before. No weather or falling beauty is like the snow: the torment of rain has Apollo’s power—to heal and give life, or to destine life to death with his asphyxiating disease. Yet, snow’s gentle touch conceals her true ability. No life can escape her tantalizing embrace when she craves to put the bravest bears to sleep and lowers the haughtiest grass’s head away from the heavens, and towards impermanence. Still, snow is beautiful, despite its deathly nature. But despite her strength, she lies dying to feverish heat at our freezing, bloodied hands. 

I imagined freezing snow would still coat the dusty grounds of Arizona. No matter the imperturbable heat of the South, snow could hardly resist its habitual inhibition of the fall: every year, dancing trees lay frozen in motion in the embrace of their white coats. Yet the day before Christmas, the sky blew the strangest mixture of heat and cold into the chasms of the Grand Canyon, chilling both gloved and bare hands alike. Still, despite the cold, the trees that stood upon those layered mountains did not capitulate to death. They held onto their tufts of green leaves upon twisting bodies, defiantly stretching towards the sky. No life was forced into sleep; a mule deer bore its eyes through my soul before jumping vibrantly into the depths of the mountains. No snow came to hush her into unseen shelters from the cold.

I wondered how a deer could survive in such harsh conditions—at such heights, and with such grace. Could I survive in a snow-less land like she does, without the fear of death covering my darting eyes and shaking my heart? No reckless wanderer could surpass the human limitations of temporality; their final, mortal skin would still be cold to the touch after the initial fall. A snow-covered man would still suffocate in an avalanche, falling hubristically to the might of our natural world. But perhaps, not oppressed by snow pushing down upon it, a plant may rise from the fertilized soil, reaching towards the sun like Icarus. 

The day of my visit to the Grand Canyon, the sun was not hidden by its own shining rays, but by rain clouds that raced each from the west to the east in each of their unique grays across the tapestry of the sky. Each time one cloud seemed to give way for the sun to shine upon those canyons, another would laugh in jest and cross across the sun’s path. The sun was hidden; but it was there, waiting, looming behind the impending rain for a chance to bring amber to the reddish-brown mountainous walls of the Grand Canyon. Ravens hovered above the crowd of people awaiting the sunrise with cameras and phones lifted high in preparation. But the star could not pass through the rainclouds to lift the spirits of the audience or the morning into a bright, new day. Still, the sun shot a beam of pure light towards the peak of a mountain miles away, illuminating the red-orange history and giving it a soft glow that seemed ever so full of romance—almost as if a Van Gogh painting had been brought to life.

Snow would not come—no, it could not come. Red cheeks signalled the trembling frigidity of early morning, and growling clouds prophesied that there would be rain. But it was not cold enough. I could not imagine that snow could come in such a desert, surrounded only with twisting trees and mountainous terrain. Not even snow can defy nature’s firm grip on the warmer environments of the South. Further into the wilderness, bears did not falter in their activity either, despite the frigid temperatures. Their dark brown bodies carefully, gingerly glided up brown trees with sparsely decorated leaves, choosing a sturdy watchtower and a comfortable napping position. The adults mostly chose to stay inside their small rock abodes, cuddling with one another—perhaps out of habit. Snow would insulate those bears in their houses, tucking the bears into their warm, seasonal sleep. But snow was not there, and the bears groaned, squirming and awaiting comfort. 

However, I missed snow. Of course, snow would freeze my hands and freeze the usually unavoidable motion of active animals. How could I hate that purity? True, snow brings forth death—ravens await her definite coming. Yet, the snow catalyzes the cycle of life, hushing hibernating animals in a warm blanket of insulation. Snow allows for new life to blossom in the spring as she juxtaposes with a new season of growth, dichotomizing her white cleanliness with life’s brown, unruly animation. Snow cannot be apart from life: she allows for her peace to cover those whom she touches, whether in death or merely in quiet sleep. 

From the calm, warm lands of Arizona, the return to Massachusetts would feel quite loud. Snow plowers and shovels would produce perpetual clicks and whirring of machinery as well as the dauntless screech of scraping plastic against asphalt in defense against snow; or, so I thought as I felt the chill of winter air surround my legs once I stepped out of the plane door from Phoenix to Boston. Unexpectedly, no pure, white snow coated the ground upon my arrival.

I felt that I was understanding how the squirming bears felt in their struggle to sleep. I wanted to move, and escape the limbo of cold and a lack of snow. I felt that we, humans, know that discomfort. The discomfort of freezing: the discomfort of the winter. Unlike bears, we do not live with a natural blanket of fur or the innate disposition to cuddle up for a sleep that lasts for months. That discomfort and desire to escape the cold has drawn us to the invention and progression to heaters and snow plowers. Is this creation our defiance of the natural world? Or is it humankind’s natural inclination to refuse what the world has set as a rule? For our own lives, we would not recognize the blood of snow on our own hands. Like blood, snow oozes in the heat and melts, dripping down the cold, unfeeling pavement into a dirty, forgotten sewage grate. 

Perhaps New York City would better describe snow’s ailing life, with smog overshadowing the gloomy clouds that would have produced that light snow to coat each skyscraper and bring back some magic. Yet with each year, the snow stays uninvited in the city’s warmer winters. Designer clothes that only a few own release soft fumes in their production. That smog and the fumes mix together, swirling into the chilling nights, and the snow visits only in short bursts, unable to escape her plight. We blind the sprawling skies and their tears are our only escape—the form before snow that we can almost reach.

Snow tiptoes on winding, jagged branches, and balances on the thin tightrope, embracing the topside of each tree. When the wind shouts, the tiptoing snow crumbles and falls, evaporating into cold, unfeeling mist, sputtering and swaying in the sky.

Today, a winter storm passed by in a hailing and pugnacious snow storm. The icy cold sliced my cheeks to a frozen red. In a scolding punishment or a desperate fight for survival, snow blew and blew in an attempt to recreate an ancient, icy world. I could see her rise with the wind in a magical sight of tossing and turning in her misty air. She froze too much, each snowball crafted only if each child stomped through a hard layer to reach into a crumbling cold. 

We salt the paths that Snow has tread on, and her nature withers away into water. 

Do grey, chilling winds come ephemerally? The dark smog of the machines clash with the pure white that should lie in the city. Small, melting blocks of white and black ice skid down the road into darker grates. Children come and go, but none splash in the snow; their little boots do not jump in joy, but trudge along the uncertain puddles in potholes. The death of nature. I believe that we have killed snow.