The Reason I Love Snow – The Holidays Day 14

On the las day of my creative writing class, after my students had turned in their play which was their final, it started to snow. The kids were fascinated by it. Now it does snow in Seoul on a regular basis. During the heart of winter, you get to see at least one snow fall a week. But what made this snow so noteworthy was the fact that big huge fluffy flakes quickly fell to the ground and covered it with its pure whiteness. This type of snow does not happen very often in Korea. Usually it dusts the ground, and after people stomp on it, it turns into a sheet of ice waiting to break the next unsuspecting person’s hip. This lasts for a couple of days before the temperature makes it disappear. So when I saw this snowfall in Seoul that eventually collected about three inches of accumulation, it brought me back to Colorado and the snow falls I used to enjoy there.

Colorado needs this snow during the winter; otherwise, it is a really ugly place. It once was called the Great American Desert for a reason. It is not the desert that comes to mind when most people hear the word desert. There are not rolling sand dunes or tiny ponds that act as oasis. Instead, it is incredible dry with a few trees populated the landscape that can survive in such harsh conditions. During the winter months, these trees lose their leaves, and they look like dead sticks poking out of the brown dead ground. It is a depressing sight to see. Add on to this cold, bitter wind and you get an environment that nobody wants to visit, let alone live in. That is why the snow becomes so important. It covers this ugly, barren landscape and makes it worth looking at. In fact, if I do not have to venture out into it to get things done quickly, it is easily one of my favorite landscapes to look upon.

There is something pure and innocent about a huge field that it covered in untouched snow. It takes away all of the imperfections of the place and turns them into a uniform blanket. Sometimes you will get to see a bird hop around on the sheet or a deer emerge from its hiding place to admire the view, but for the most part, it is left untouched as if nature had never felt the footsteps of man upon it before. The scars that the land bares are covered up, and all that is left is white.

On those days that I get to sit there with a cup of coffee and look out the window on the snow are days where the schedule no longer matters. I can let the agendas of others go away, and just spend the day look at the snow fall, covering the earth in its purity. I look forward to snows, real snow falls, not the inconvenient inch that Seoul experiences on a regular basis. And oddly enough, it is the one thing that I miss the most from my move to South Korea. I feel at home now that I came back to Denver and it welcomed me with a nice snow that I can enjoy. It made returning home like that snow I saw as the semester came to end, and I thought about being back in this icy environment. It is this reason that I, unlike so many other people in the world, love the snow.