Snow to Remember

No two humans are alike. And no two snowflakes are the same.

Let’s talk about snow.

Flurries outside a window are mesmerizing to watch. Mounds of undisturbed snowfalls illustrate calendars. Sleet, ice, cold fronts and gusty wind, not so welcome.

In December 1974, 18 inches fell in Oakland County, and again, across the metro Detroit area in January 1978. April 1886 saw over 24 inches with 12 feet drifts. Common for Marquette, not for Detroit neighborhoods.

Frozen water vapor’s different from rain because for snow, crystallization in clouds condenses directly into ice, bypassing the liquid state. The ice absorbs more and freezes again, forming into snow crystals while sleet is frozen water, tiny balls of ice.

All those individual crystals, and no two alike. Symmetrical, blown by changing wind, affected by sunlight, the six-pointed ice flowers fall to earth.

In 135 B.C. a Chinese scholar Han Ying described the shape of snowflakes. In the early 1600’s, the famous German scientist Johannes Kepler tried to understand why they always had six sides, but atomic theory hadn’t been developed in his time, so he didn’t know about hydrogen bonding and molecular interaction forming open crystal structures.

Well, neither do I.

In the 1880’s in Vermont, Wilson Bentley used photographic plates to display thousands of different snowflake images before he died of pneumonia.

Calendar images of snowy forests, pristine in beauty, don’t include the freezing temperatures.

Then there are blizzards.

I was taking classes at the OCC campus in the Heights one semester when snow attacked. Inches rose in a hurry, and by the time I returned to the parking lot, cars were covered.
Cold? Door locks and windshields were frozen.

I tried to turn my key, but couldn’t get the door open. I was afraid I’d twist the key, so I banged along the edge of the door with my mittened fist, and finally, in frustration, kicked the door with my boot.

Then I looked inside. Right model. Wrong owner. Thank heaven I didn’t run inside for someone to help me break into another student’s car.

We welcomed snow in Kalkaska during the week after Christmas. Nowhere to be, snowmen and snow forts waiting, windows that looked out on winter scenes of white hills and mounded tree branches.

But trying to get to work, or home again in a winter storm was a different kind of adventure.

One night, after class at the OCC Farmington Hills campus, I trudged through the enormous parking lot with snow and sleet pelting me. What? No car? I’d forgotten where I parked it, or even which lot I used that night. Cold, tired, irritated, it took me an hour to locate my car, buried by that time in snow, wind in my face, sleet tinkling around me in the dark.

Not my favorite snowfall.

But not as bad as one early afternoon in Plymouth when we were sent home because roads were becoming impassable. At that time, I lived in Roseville, nearly 40 miles away, and cell phones were in the future, at least for me.

Daily drives could take two hours in stop-and-go traffic, but there was no traffic that day. Freeways had been closed and my tiny Colt was a sled on the untracked roads. I couldn’t pull off to scrape the windshield because of the snowdrifts, so crept along, alone in the world, or so it felt.

Took me four hours to pull into my driveway, and by that time, I was whimpering and promising to be good, if only I’d make it home safely.

Again, not my favorite snowfall, if memorable.

But one Christmas Eve afternoon, on a visit to Michigan, Anne and I drove into the countryside of Dryden from Warren to pick up her son. Snow was falling in soft floral petals, fields were white and gold, no other cars were in sight, and the roads were growing treacherous. But the company was perfect and the scenery exquisite, fitting for Christmas.

That fragment of time stands out to me as my favorite snowfall.

Anyone from the Heights has snow stories, from the thrill of no school to fighting your way home from work, and any winter, at any time, you could add another.

But looking out my window, warm and comfortable, the stories are treasures to savor, not dreaded occasions.

Have to admit it—foolish or not, I miss snow.