A Few Thought for the New Year
What Snow Teaches Me
By Carson Bennett, 1-02-09
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I was lucky enough to spend much of this holiday season surrounded by friends and family – and snow and mountains. Maybe I’m being sentimental, but the last week or two has made me think about the connections between these things.
At the risk of perpetuating a cliché, snow teaches me that life is short. The winter lasts only so long. Eventually, the flakes on the ground are the only flakes we have, and once the little spot of Earth on which I’m riding tips back toward the sun, those flakes will return to their original form, filling creeks, rivers and lakes, continuing the cycle. I need to spend less time indoors longing for snow, and more time outdoors enjoying it.
Snow teaches me that life is better when surrounded by friends and family. A lone snowflake doesn’t last long. It takes only one warm breath, one moment in the sunshine, one heavy footstep to erase a single snowflake, but there is power, safety, and comfort in numbers. As for power, no one notices one snowflake sliding down a mountain, but millions sliding down together will uproot trees, carry boulders, change the shape of the mountain itself. As for safety and comfort, on the mountain’s northern faces, snow gathers in drifts where individual flakes maintain one-another long into the summer.
Snow teaches me to slow down. Literally, it teaches me that I can’t bomb down Hoosier Pass on Colorado’s Highway 9 in an early morning white-out without expecting consequences. Like sliding off the road. Figuratively, standing outside watching nickel-sized downy snowflakes float through the air makes me realize that I take myself too seriously. I want to do things well, I want to do them now, and I want to see the fruits of my efforts materialize before my eyes. Sometimes – most times – that’s not the way life works. I need to slow down and have faith that I will get to where I’m going, as surely as these snowflakes leave the clouds and, eventually, softly, come to rest on my shoulders.
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