The Magic of Snow

What explains the magic of snow?

Today it snowed for hours and then, just as dusk began to fall, I glimpsed the line of hills to our east, the first sign of the storm lifting. Heading outside with the shovel, the sky remained an unbroken gray, and then, almost imperceptibly, a change: a hint of blue, first high and faint, then spreading slowly from the west like paint on a wet canvas.

Falling snow is the stuff of poetry, from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep …”) to this little ditty by the gifted haiku poet John Stevenson: snowy night / sometimes you can’t be / quiet enough.

Returning to my question, I think the magic of snow lies in its power to transform. Like the wave of a magician’s wand, a snowstorm—in an instant—transforms an ordinary landscape into something different, mysterious, and unfamiliar. Colors fade and lines blur. Sounds recede as well, swallowed up in the whirling dance of ice crystals. Somber. Meditative. Lovely. The larger and softer the flakes, the more dramatic the effect.

I suspect too that part of the magic lies in how quickly it fades. Almost a soon as the snow stops, the snow falls from the branches, restoring the familiar, winter shapes of trees. The horizon returns, along with the noise of traffic, and I’m left cold, scraping ice from the front walk with an old shovel.

(Photo courtesy of algo on Flickr; available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/algo/2391818054/.)