Thoughts of a White Winter by Barry Mathias
Along the southwest coast of B.C., snow is such a fleeting experience that most of us never come to terms with it. Unlike our friends in the northern parts of the province, we do not see snow as a legitimate part of the winter season, but more a possible variation in the seemingly unending days of rain. On rare occasions, it arrives in a multi-inch dump that never fails to surprise, delight, worry and annoy us. It usually materializes in darkness, and the next day when we get up, everything has changed. J.B. Priestley wrote: "You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?" There is something romantic and beautiful about the first sight of snow, when it lies like a thick white cover, draping the bushes and fences, and forming artistic drifts. That brief time, before the first cars’ tires imprint their dark furrows on the hidden roads, when yards and secret driveways remain free of footprints and when tree branches
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are bowed down with the weight – this is the time to observe snow. But soon it starts to change: snowplows, as rare as a dry day in February, are soon charging headlong down our notorious roads, like knights of old, doing battle with the white enemy. Drivers of cars, without winter tires, practise being stunt men as they career, at walking pace, around bends, and struggle in a sideways descent down hills, only to come to an ignominious halt at the first steep ascent. Another delayed ferry has been missed! For children, however, this is heaven. All those inherited behaviors: the walking across a field of undisturbed snow, and then reversing the boots in the same imprints as though the unknown person has been abducted by aliens; the building of snowmen (not snowwomen?), and the creating and assembling of dozens of snowballs for unsuspecting passers-by, who never pass by. The snow fights with friends, the gradual soaking as snow melts down warm backs leading to the eventual return of the warriors to the safety of their homes – wet, cold, shivering and triumphant! Adults remember their winter childhoods with transient pleasure, for soon there is the panic to start the car, and the hernia-causing digging-out of the drive, only to have the snow plough immediately block their entrance to the road. Then, there is the heart-numbing journey to the ferry terminal: trying to avoid those cars without winter tires, helping to push the same vehicles off the road, giving the same drivers a ride and finally arriving to find the ferry is cancelled. Oh, the joys of snow! From the perspective of the retired, those who do not have to hurry to work, and the young who have time to play, snow is a rare and wonderful experience. It is a time to rediscover old skis, be delighted that winter clothes still fit, take photographs of ordinary scenes suddenly made magical, and the once-in-a-lifetime chance to use a toboggan on roads devoid of cars. Snow is one of those strange natural phenomena that provokes a huge range of human reactions: we love it and we hate it. Children are excited and bewildered by it and adults are seduced and enraged by it, but the sociologist would say that our reactions would be different if snow happened for three months of the year. So, let’s just be grateful we live on the Islands.
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18 SEASIDE | january 2013
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