#135: Snowflakes
“Snow is falling, all around you…”
It snowed in Durham last week, and on the 30th of November no less, a perfect start to the Christmas season. Snowflakes, those unique and minuscule objects, fell from the sky in their thousands, joining together to cover the city of Durham in a blanket of snow. Falling all day, I had a Winter Wonderland outside my window by the afternoon.
I’m not sure that I have ever thought of snow as an object. Objects made of snow, yes — like snowballs and snowmen. But the snow itself? It feels less like an object, and more like an experience. The outside world is altered, changed to one continuous colour of blinding white, and every sound is muffled. When I step out into it, there is a different sound and feel as this soft covering collapses beneath my feet.
I delight in snow. It is a childlike delight when I sit inside watching snow fall outside my window. And I when I step outside I know that I will play in it, throwing snowballs, jumping into snowdrifts, and building a snowman.
When I come back inside, I get to feel that hygge feeling. The satisfying cosiness of coming into the warmth and out of the cold, curled up in blankets by a window to look out onto this wintry landscape.
For all my excitement at the sight of these delicate flakes, so susceptible to changes in temperature, it is easy to forget that they are dangerous objects. When massed together they will stop cars and trains, and at every step I take on my way to lectures I brace myself for the inevitable slip and slide, and the possibility that I may land on the floor as my feet slide out from under me.
Yet still I love them. I cannot lose my simple joy at the sight of a snowflake falling from the sky and landing on the ground. I watch in anticipation, hoping that it will stick and not melt, and that soon it will be joined by many more. The snowflakes are falling, and Christmas is coming.
