Feb. 19, 2002
EDITORIAL
Snow Lines
Exploring the Relationship with Snow and Winter
By Bernard
Mergen
Snow, falling from a gray winter
sky, can literally stop us in our tracks and make us think about who
we are and where were going. Frozen particles of water, translated
by the human eye and mind into snowflakes, trigger one of lifes
periodic reality checks. A cold smack upside the head disguised as a
friendly push with a fuzzy cold mitten.
It might be fashionable now
to describe snowflakes as computer chips packed with data about atmospheric
temperatures, humidity, air currents, and microorganisms. Each crystal
is a little transistor full of electrical energy. Each is a lesson in
fractals, each a map of a kingdom with animals, vegetables, and minerals.
These and other fanciful analogies occur to me each time I see and feel
snow fall.
My walks in snow began more
than 60 years ago on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada where the
winter snowpack is white gold providing water needed for
the following year, and have continued over most of North America and
three other continents. There may be identical snowflakes, but no two
snow journeys are the same.
A few years ago, in mid-June,
my wife and I stepped into a blowing snowstorm from a sturdy MIAT jet
that landed us in a yak pasture in northern Mongolia. On our jeep ride
to Lake Hovsgul we were startled to see Hooded Cranes (Grus leucogeranus)
in the nearby woods, standing firmly on their thin legs, waiting out
the storm. They were probably as astonished to see other bipeds, feathered
in down parkas, as we were to see them, but they concealed their amusement.
Two other desert snows stand
out in my memory. On the Fourth of July, in the heart of the South African
winter, I was near the foot of Rhino Peak, a 10,000-foot mountain near
the border with Lesotho. I could see snow in the distance, but found
none as I hiked to look for the Bushman caves with their graceful paintings
of animals. I wandered for most of the day, enjoying the high barren
landscape so much like Nevadas. Then I noticed that the sun was
setting and I had lost the trail. As I sat on a rock trying not to panic,
I saw snow. It was probably frost, but clinging to the branches of the
small bushes near a stream were the stellar scouts for the distant snows.
Seeing these familiar crystals was energizing. I had compulsively learned
the Zulu word for snow, ighwa, and a few fragile flakes were my reward.
I trudged back to my hotel renewed.
A little less than two years
later I was walking along Nevada State Route 157 on Mt. Charleston in
the Toiyabe National Forest near Las Vegas, looking for a place to begin
cross-country skiing. Snow clung to the sagebrush and piñon pine
like tissues. Snow blossoms or tourist roses? Nature imitating culture.
As I left the highway, struggling across the ditch that separates macadams
paradise from Adams, the snow became deeper, cleaner, harder.
From the car window at 50 miles
an hour this snow looked soft and new. Up close it was pitted with little
holes made when a dark pine cone or even a seed absorbed heat from the
sun and melted through the crust of the snow. I broke a trail below
the Lee Canyon ski area, where the downhill runs are called The
Line, The Strip, and Bimbo. The glow of
neon signs from Las Vegas was an aurora australis in the early evening
as I glided past islands of cholla and creosote bush in an ocean of
snow. A coyote barked a greeting and disappeared.
Snow is a cosmic joke; water
masquerading as solid hexagons, needles, and columns; Lego blocks for
building snowmen and snowforts; and putty for sculpting. Snowballs are
paragons of all spheres. As demiurgi we mold and hold and throw, creating
and destroying snow. Its an old story, the one about a snowman
who comes to life and frolics with its sculptor, but melts when invited
indoors. Snow reminds us that nature can be transfigured, but not transubstantiated.
I was doing lots of figuring
and transfiguring at the Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation
Services West-Wide Snow Survey Training School on Mt. Bachelor,
OR. About 50 water resource managers; soil, range, and forest conservationists
from the SCS, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation; Weather
Service meteorologists; municipal water department employees; and one
historian were being taught snow surveying, winter camping, and avalanche
hazards and rescue. As part of our final exam we had to build snow shelters
and spend the night on the mountain. For three hours the forest rang
with clanking shovels, thwacking axes, and exclamations. One skillful
young woman, an experienced Forest Ranger, constructed a snow igloo
better than Nanooks. The rest of us settled for a trench dug in
the snow, lined with pine branches, and covered with a plastic tarp
with snow added for insulation. The pits and mutilated branches made
me think of the first attempts of our ancestors to trap mammoths. I
drew a crude George Washington University flag to identify my hovel.
Snow is dangerous stuff, but
it can also bring tranquility to the city. Behind my Capitol Hill row
house is a vacant lot, its lush vegetation of common cocklebur, goldenrod,
ragweed, dandelion, jimsonweed, ladysthumb, pigweed, swamp smartweed,
fox tail, broomsedge, sweet pea, daffodils, and ailanthus (the familiar
parking lot palm) reduced in winter to scattered brown and
yellow stalks, some with broken stems and dried whorls. As snow creates
patches of white amid this in-town tundra, it paints an Andrew Wyeth-like
scene of burnished gold flecked with silver. A crown for the earth in
a city established by attempted regicide. When enough snow falls to
cover the discarded bottles and, finally, the broken and abandoned furniture,
the lot reverts to wilderness. Marching on trident feet, birds are the
first to invade. They scour the lot, then leave it to the midnight rites
of opossums and feral cats whose paw prints will be followed the next
day by children in search of adventure, and the pageant of civilization
begins anew.
Bernard Mergen, professor
of American Civilization, is the author of the book, Snow in America
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu