Snow

Snow is complex. Not chemically: a couple of hydrogen and an oxygen come together below 32°F (0°C) in the atmosphere, eventually becoming too heavy to stay afloat and drift, tumble, flurry down to an oddly expectant planet.

Snow is complex because there is such dichotomy in its existence. Perhaps this rings true for many things that I am simply overlooking, but I can think of few comparable examples that can bring such simultaneous elation and chagrin.

Sunday night, along with a large number of my college-attending peers, I was overjoyed to learn the school administration had bowed to the weather's whim and given us a snow day. The sentiment carried over to Monday morning, when most woke up at a later than average hour due to the nonexistence of academic obligations.

Yet, once pelted with a snowball, or after taking an unexpected dive on an inopportune sled ride, the love for snow died quickly. Complaints of the cold, and the wet, and the driving difficulty all began to drown out the adoring comments we had for the precipitation just a few hours earlier. Those comments returned Monday night, and Tuesday as well when we received two additional snow days.

Similarly, snow has great connotations for both death and birth, innocence and degradation. Christ is said to have washed us whiter than snow--so it is a standard of cleanliness and purity. But, at the same time, snow brings desolation. There are few things as harsh and violent as cold, and as subtly destructive as ice. For many, snow spells death. Any vegetation or unsheltered wildlife is certainly doomed at the arrival of snow.

The only things that can survive snow are those that can fight it. Humans combat it with our central heating and snowplows, but we welcome it with adulation. Snow is, like almost everything else in creation, complex. Love to life to death to doughnuts have a pro and con comparison, a good and bad connotation, especially humans. The beauty of it all, and at least one purpose of art, is sifting through the light and dark of it all.