Snow was a given growing up in Iowa. We seemed to have more snow then and we tolerated it as it was just a fact of life. Snow meant more work on the farm with clearing feed troughs and keeping the animals dry. The fun kid thing about snow was when we had a blizzard and got to stay home from school—Snow Days!
I did not have a choice about snow growing up but today, I choose to live where snow is possible every month of the year. I do not love driving in it, but otherwise I relish snowfall. Absence sometimes makes the heart grow fonder as I spent 29 years living in parts of the US (TX and NC) that received little snow. A fond recollection in NC, however, was going to the beach in January after an unusual overnight snow. Instead of the ocean water lapping to the sand, it splashed to the shoreline and slowly crumbled the snow into the salt water.
On average Estes Park gets 75 inches of snow a year and significant snow 9 months of the year. Except for a few dirty piles, however, the snow doesn’t stick around much. The solar power of the sun melts it quickly OR the wind blows it away. The mountains retain their snow for months and in minutes I can leave my house and play in snow. Yet, I do not have to live in feet of snow.
I am overjoyed to open the blinds in the early morning and see fresh snow on the ground. It makes me want to go immediately and explore what critters have left tracks on their early morning ambles. I love Carol Rifka Brunt’s quote: “There’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special.”
My colleague, Jerry Apps, wrote about farm life growing up in the 1930’s. He poetically described the quiet of winter on a farm. One statement he made, however, reminded me of the Monet exhibit I saw a year ago. Apps suggested that everything in the winter appears black and white. As I reflected on the Monet exhibit, I now understand that Monet saw numerous shades of white when he painted dozens of winter scenes such as the photo above.
Snow is clearly not monochromatic. Nothing accentuates the various white shades of winter as much as when a burst of color comes through—a red rose hip peeking out from the side of the trail, the stark blue sky, juniper bushes with their blue-gray berries, the silver glisten of snow melt running down a rock, a rainbow twinkle of sunshine on a snowdrift, and even snowfall on elk duds (see above photo).
I also appreciate snowflake shapes and patterns. In grade school we took colored construction paper outside to collect (momentarily) snowflakes. No two snowflakes were alike. My co-volunteer, Jon Olsen, is teaching me about the different types of snow as we work at Bear Lake every Saturday and analyze the snowflakes that land on our brown volunteer fleece jackets– hexagonal, stellar plates and dendrites, needles, columns, and rimed crystals also known as graupel.
After years of deprivation, I am romanticizing snow. Yet, I feel a thrill in watching snow fall and experiencing the magic of snow as I wander through the winter.
I liked this one a lot, too. Not only are the whites all different shades, but what fascinates me, are all of the different kinds/shapes of snow that often influence the shade! 🙂 All that being said, I just wish we had more snow so we can begin to notice all the shades 🙂