Snow Days Are Gifts of Beauty, Calm, and More
I feel sorry for you if . . .
I feel sorry for you if you live where there is not even one good snowfall per year. Which sadly means I have pity parties for myself now: this danged climate disruption makes winter a very unpredictable time in southern Pennsylvania.
I’m not trying to be disrespectful of the beauty of other climates (or to suggest that certain ones are superior to others.) However, I want to clue you in to the beauty of a Winter Storm Snow Day. It’s a gift from Mother Nature.
The news media reports about airport and school closings, hideous highway conditions and the sad accidents. But the “negative news” people neglect to describe the benefits which are highly aesthetic and spiritual.
During the Snowing — Peaceful Silence
First, picture a heavy snowfall. If you’re lucky, it has no damaging wind or ice pellets — just a blanket (what a comforting analogy) of snow coming to you.
The Christmas hymn Silent Night contains a phrase which aptly describes it: Heavenly Peace.
A non-windy snow “storm” is so beautifully quiet. While there is so much beautiful change for your eyes to take in, it is so paradoxically “soft” on the ears. Besides the snowflakes themselves making no sound, a snowfall transforms the usual outdoors sounds. Everyday scraping, clanging, blaring, scratching noises are muffled. Comforting, common sounds are magically transformed into special resonances.
When I was a young girl, I had the great fortune to live one and a half blocks from the Shannon Drake trolley line in Pittsburgh. Its tracks ran through a scraggly woods at the bottom of our street. Of course, we were all familiar with its clackedy-clack sounds either slowing to a stop or hastening in tempo until it regained traveling speed. But to hear it in the snow time: bliss! A happy, familiar clatter was muted from its usual drum rim shot character into yarn mallets on a soft drum.
Natural Beauty
A snow-draped world is a marvelous, breath-taking treat for the soul!
It frosts the trees and places white doilies on bushes. Windows receive intricate etchings of frost. Roofs grow icicle teeth. Little animals leave tracks that you’d never detect were it not for the snow.
But, besides transforming the everyday sights into white-veiled wonders, snow partners with light to re-create new vistas. Whether it is from sun or from your nightly-lit lamppost in the yard, the light energy bounces and sparkles on the snow, scattering like gems. Snow is like a prism scattering light into the rainbow of hues. Bonus points: there is no admission price. The only requirement is readiness to been awe-struck.
Symbolic Color White
In many traditions and religions, the color white represents goodness and purity. In human aura work, the color represents the Divine, your spiritual path and connection to the universe. In Black Hat Feng Shui, white is the color associated with creativity and children.
Also, in our American culture — white is often the color of a blank piece of paper, a paper full of opportunity. It is the Tabula Rasa, the clean slate, the opportunity to go in any direction, to create.
Priority Shift
A significant snow changes one’s priorities in a good way. And, as survivors of the COVID-19 shutdowns, we know what that feels like in a hopeless, where’s-the-end kind of way. But, a blizzard has an ending. And THAT feels comforting!
You do what you need to to make your sidewalk or driveway manageable. You dig out your car. Often in Pennsylvania, neighbors turn a snow storm into a bonding event: a team of bundled up folks armed with shovels, brooms, and blowers, attack one property after another. The many hands make the work go more quickly and it is extremely satisfying to accomplish tangible clean-up quickly. Plus you learn a little bit more about each other.
A Valentine’s Day blizzard on the east coast in the mid-1980s inspired newspaper columnist Andy Rooney to verbalize what I had long felt. You set aside the fake important tasks to do what is really important. You stop and appreciate small things. As he described his time shoveling during falling snow, he observed that all those people who usually need to go out at night just to pick up some item or other at the store, didn’t go anywhere. The streets were quiet. That the homemade bread, broccoli and chicken that his wife served for dinner after his day of snow shoveling labor tasted like the best meal in the world. That he was grateful to be safe, warm, and dry with his loved one.
When conditions become challenging, we are forced into the Zen practice of living in the now. And what a beautiful now it is.
If you have missed this good part of a snowstorm, the next time you’re in one I hope you will see it with new, appreciative eyes.