Yesterday, a very rare thing happened to me.
I got to have a snow day.
If you’re what society considers to be an adult, you probably know what a rare occurrence this. Yesterday morning, as I got ready for work, I scrolled through Instagram a bit and envied anyone who was sharing spooky, snowy photos. Then, as luck would have it, the town decided not to so much as sprinkle a grain of salt onto my street until well after 1PM, so going to work was out of the question. I spent the day trying to nurture myself creatively, which honestly has not been the easiest thing to do lately, and managed to take some pictures I am very happy with.
While I prefer the backdrop of autumn, by far, sometimes I feel like I really don’t give winter the credit that it deserves.
In autumn, everything is dying, but in winter, everything is already dead. It’s a strange thing to try to explain, but have you ever gone outside during a snowstorm, and just listened? The silence that blankets the air is so eerie, if you really think about it.
We know when it’s raining. While the sound of rain can be relaxing, it’s also violent and chaotic in its way. Snow, though…I hate to use an idiom normally reserved for a certain crude bodily function, but “silent but deadly” is definitely a good way to describe it. Snow can be falling at any time, and if we’re not looking out our windows, we might not be aware of it all. Several feet of snow can accumulate without a sound, threatening our transportation, daring us to fight back at it with our shovels, all while looking beautiful. Snow is that person we all have known, the one who doesn’t speak when they’re angry. We’re left to wonder if they despise us, or perhaps aren’t as offended as we tonight. Can we ever be sure? Can we ever know what snow will do, ultimately?
The silence of snow feels like a reminder of how dead everything is. Standing outside in a snowstorm almost makes you feel as if you’re standing on the border of some realm of the dead, waiting for ghosts to appear. And occasionally, when the beautiful, silent storm does make a sound, what it sounds like is the wailing of a ghost. The wind that comes with snow is not a normal wind. It’s a desperate sound, a scream in the silence, that tosses a portion of the beautiful, dangerous white death into the air in such a way that you almost think it’s an actual ghost starting to materialize. And maybe it is.
Is there any other phenomenon that makes us worry the way snow does? It has such power over us. We hear that it’s coming and panic sets in. What will we get this time? A beautiful coating that makes the dead world its fairyland, or the angry, silent monster, that descends upon us violently, trapping us inside until it, and no one else, decides that it’s had enough?
Of course, I don’t really believe that there is a “spooky season”. Such a term would imply the existence of a “non-spooky season”, and who wants to live that way?
But, I will say this:
Everything around us in autumn is dying, but the leaves bid us a fond farewell. In winter, everything is dead, and, at any given moment, a silent monster can release its wrath upon us, forcing us to listen to ghosts in the great beyond, while it holds us hostage, alone with our fears and morbid curiosities.
That sure sounds like a “spooky season” to me.
Just discovered your blog and this amazing post. I share your thoughts about winter, but you articulated it so well; in a way I never quite could. Your ruminations in this article offer a lot to consider. Beautifully written!
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