Snowshire

SNOW! It has snowed in the Shire and it is absolutely beautiful. When it snows here, it snows like it would in your most fairytale of dreams - spires dusted in white, perfectly constructed flakes that dance down from the sky, deer huddling together for warmth in a blanketed rugby pitch next to an icy river (that just so happens to be the Isis, aka the Thames). Walking down the street feels like you're dancing through a symphony - like violins and cellos are playing around you with every glance and every fuzzy crunch of your shoe.

Oxford blanketed in snow, from Christ Church meadow.

I know I promised I would write about red trousers this time around, but today I want to write about snow because, well, it's all around. I've learned some things about snow these past few days. One thing I've learned is the silence of snow - that soft break in noise, like the excess sounds in the world just hold their breaths for the chance to be blanketed. I've also noticed that snowflakes are like very cute versions of raindrops - you can't get mad when delicate flakes of white fluff hit you in the face, but it's pretty damn annoying when pellets of water attack your eyes when you're walking to the library. I have, at the same time, discovered that snowflakes are still a form of water, and that when you walk inside, those really lovely pieces of weather dandruff melt, and drown you. And then you're just cold...really, really cold. I've also learned that ice (yet another form of water!) is malicious, and full of evil trickery. It sneaks up, trying to cause slapstick comedy right when you've become confident in your new-found "snow-gait" (which, for me, is a distinct effort to march rather than shuffle). Along with this, I've learned that high heels in snow are a dangerous idea. It's kind of like ice-skating in an evening gown, which isn't actually as fun as it might sound...

Peering at the diorama.

This is my first time actually "living" in snow. I've been skiing, yes, and I think I built a snowman once when I was eight in Yosemite. BUT, I've never actually "functioned" in the snow. Every day this weekend I felt childish wonder - peeking out my window in the morning was like unveiling a covered diorama, excitedly anticipating which scene I would find before me. I've taken many moments these past few days to experience the snow in different ways: observing it from the indoors (mostly out of the initial fear of how to interact with it), trekking through it, playing in it, letting it fall on my tongue and nest in my eyelashes, then greeting it with a firm handshake as I molded it into a ball. I've settled into a fond appreciation of snow, and what it does to the world around us - to the disorienting beauty it drapes everything in, and its ability to repaint an entire city and cloud it at the same time.

I could go on for a long time. But, instead, I think I'll leave you for now with this poem:

The Snow Man

by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

(that was pretty Oxford of me, huh?)