The Enchantment of Snow

Perhaps the idea of a snow day is rather particular to certain regions.  Here, it's always been the most wonderful surprise one could hope for: an unscheduled holiday from school, with the only thing to do is to play in the snow with your friends all morning, and then come inside to get warm with some hot cocoa and then enjoy some indoor activities.  Because the snow tends to melt off fairly quickly here, one never saw more than one (or possibly two) snow days before they'd finally clear the roads.  I'm sure that in regions with routine and heavy snowfall, the idea of cancelling school just because of a moderate amount snow probably sounds rather ridiculous.


Well, my adventures in the wonders of snow this year started on sunday afternoon, when hanging with some friends turned into a massive snowball fight (well, iceballs, to be honest), sans gloves.  Well, unsurprisingly, our fingers soon felt like they would fall off from frostbite, so we retired for the rest of the afternoon to a coffeeshop, in front of a massive fireplace to warm up.  Then, on Monday morning, it seemed to me that the roads weren't too bad (a bit icy, I suppose), so I drove to school only to find that my morning lectures were cancelled (I guess bad roads are a relative concept around here in comparison to my more northerly home).  No complaints here!  =]  And then today, we actually did get some fresh snowfall overnight and we had our second snow day!  So, it seems like I ended up getting the not-quite-half-term break I'd been whinging over,  because my lectures for tomorrow were already cancelled. =]

Somehow, things seem rather magical after the first snowfall of the school year.  Everything is covered in pristine white, any flaws temporarily concealed.  I love the crunch of the powder underfoot and the muffled scrapes of sleds and nordic skis as they carve out previously unseen paths in the snow.  And above all, there is laughter and the atmosphere seems lighter, somehow more appropriate for making new friends.  Odd, how some frozen rain from on high can transform the ordinary routines of the world below.  And like any good thing, after a while, the spell is broken and everything becomes rather mundane again.  The snow slowly defiles into a dirty grey, which then finally relents to the mire it temporarily shrouded from view.  However, it's clear that all the enthusiasm the snowfall engendered has long since waned, the myriad possibilities it avidly suggested a day before, now becomes but a fleeting memory.