On Snow Part 2

For my inaugural post of 2015, I'd like to explain the title of this post.

"Snow" is a word that has a multitude of meanings for me.

From childhood, I began to associate snow with excitement and beauty. The flurry of flakes is magnificent both in its appearance and in the potential it brings for fun. I would venture to say that such associations are universal among children. Although I rarely build snowmen or toss snowballs at my sister anymore, snow will always call back these memories from childhood.

Snow is curious in that regard. Its presence and connotations change with age, but all of those meanings can simultaneously reappear each time the first snowfall begins to descend.

In my adolescence, I began to see snow as symbolically beautiful. Engaged in romanticism studies as I was, snow began to seem like one of nature's few remaining victories. For a brief moment before the snow trucks come along, the world looks completely natural again. Indeed, this is all courtesy of the descent of nature's purest blanket, although some days it may seem to be more like a vicious white army. Is this push of nature just a fleeting vision of what once was? Or is it an eternal counterattack?

So many stories are told in this blizzard than I could ever know. Both real stories of our joy within the cold, or imaginary, fantastical legends of old. Snow provides perhaps the most flexible backdrop ever told.

These days I see that snow is perhaps not as tranquil as it seems, but rather a mad mistress who can rip life apart at the seam. For those without homes, or whose spirit is low, snow only makes reality all the more cold. And so my old friend, I see you square. You're not quite as innocent as your color seems to bear.

Through this all, the snow continues to fall. The only thing that's really changed is me.

Is it a memory of a forgotten excitement? Perhaps a setting for one's developing mind, in both its imagination and newfound cynicism? Or is it just like any other natural force, so innocent, yet teetering on disaster?

Or perhaps in the end, snow can be anything. And what could be more pure than that?