Of all the kinds of weather, there are none that produce such a wide range of emotion as snow. Droughts and blistering heat, floods and hurricanes are all associated with one response: it’s really bad. Snow, on the other hand, produces a panoply of reactions.
For school children, it’s a few days to devote to video games and sledding, so they are happy. The moms are a little less so after the novelty of home-bound children wears thin. For adults who have important work assignments, snow-clogged roads are frustrating. One of the worst scenarios is the interruption of travel. This week end, I particularly, thought of the tens of thousands who wanted to be in route to the Super Bowl, but most flights were snowbound. The final coup de grace for them would come Sunday night if the power fails.
If one has nothing pressing to do in the outside world and there’s an adequate supply of food and beverage, then it’s a cozy time to relax in front of the fire. The spiky, black trees of the forest are transformed into lacy, delicate sculptures. The brown grass of the lawn becomes a downy comforter spreading toward the rolling meadows. There are books to read, conversations to be held, games to be played and, if worse comes to worst, there’s television. Except for sports involving a team in which one has a personal interest, TV will definitely accelerate the onset of cabin fever or, as the really rich might experience, mansion madness.
We all know of the terrible suffering that snow can bring to those who have none of the comforts most of us take for granted. A roof that doesn’t leak, pipes that don’t freeze, thermostatic heat that varies not a degree between day and night; it’s quite a different story if those systems aren’t in place.
Every elementary student knows of the winter of 1778 at Valley Forge. Although there was no battle ever fought there, the survival of the Continental Army was the turning point in the war. Later, they learn about Napoleon’s disastrous decision to retreat from the Russian winter in 1812. One wonders how World War II might have ended had Hitler not been so misguided as to think he could fight a two-front war, with the bulk of his troops locked in a Russian winter. In December of 1944, the Battle of the Bulge hinged on the weather. Take a look at General Patton’s prayer if you have no memory of how desperate that winter was. Snows and winter changed the course of history in all those wars.
It wasn’t until 1950 that I personally realized that snow isn’t always a holiday from school, a pleasant time to spend with your family. In June of that year, a number of my 17 year-old high school acquaintances, having joined the Army reserves on a lark, found out life was more complicated than they had anticipated. All they had to do, or so they thought, was go to reserve meetings one weekend a month, play with real guns, and get $75 a month, a princely sum in those days. Korea changed all of that.
In November they found themselves at Chosin Reservoir, snow and ice, the temperature 35 degrees below zero, and facing 60,000 Chinese troops who had just entered the war. The difference between the memories of sledding on Stanley Avenue and watching their feet turn black from frostbite must have been an unbelievable contrast. The Chosin Reservoir, like Valley Forge, the Russian winters of 1814 and 1944, and Bastogne, was a turning point in Korea. They held off the Chinese and lived to fight another day.
Those in the comfort of our high school and our moonlight sledding were marginally aware of what our classmates were enduring. When they returned in 1952, they were no longer boys, but men who had seen and done things, lived through hardships and pain, we could scarcely imagine. Not all of them came home and we realized that the world was a harsher place than it seemed.
So this week, snowbound for the third time in six weeks, I will have hot-buttered rum as I bask in front of the fire with Beloved. After the game, I think I will walk outside barefooted (briefly) to remind myself that, through no fault of their own, millions have died on days like these, and some of them not a stone’s throw from where we live.
By Hayden Hollingsworth [email protected]