Feature Article December 11, 2002
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Snow BalmIt comes to us each year about this time, hesitant at first and temporarily disappearing, but as the sun recedes farther south and the frost gets in the ground, a snow-fall will stay and be with us for about a third of our year. It is Mother Nature's balm, a cold but cozy comforter, insulating plants and animals from the winter's rigors. Without it many lives would cease and the earth's surface would have to be quite different to satisfy the varying life forms living over, on and in it.
We welcome snow with varying enthusiasm. Youngsters can hardly wait to play in its first fall, throwing snowballs, building forts and creating angels with snowy wings, as well as using its softness to joyfully slide and fall. Businesses capitalize upon it, getting out the winter merchandise and preparing elaborate hills for older youngsters to play and court upon. We older ones, having been through seasonal changes so many times, shudder a bit and take advantage of Mother Nature's rest to slow down a bit ourselves. It is an intimate part of the lives of many people around the world.
In our excessive hurry many of us resent it. We plow it out of the way, contaminate it with chemicals, melt it and curse it. It is impossible for modern civilization to adapt to it without destroying it; a fault we too often exhibit while sharing Mother Nature's bounties. There are too many of us to comfortably adapt so we destroy.
The sparse colonies of Inuit and their international cousins across the top of the world learned to live with it. They were at relative peace with it. They really did not have much choice but to accept the environment for what it is. They adapted and were content with its limitations. They invented many words to describe snow and its varying nature and their intimacy with it. It was only when other peoples, overflowing their share of space or trying to fulfil natural inquisitiveness, came into contact with the north that seeds of discontent were sown. This adaptive aboriginal civilization began to decline to the point that many of its citizens are now largely dependent upon charity.
Progress is irreversible, but it can be slowed down. In my opinion it must be slowed as we are wearing out our environment far too quickly in our perpetual search for excessive comfort and pleasures. Yes, we have to plow snow, shovel it, and destroy some of it, but let us be more careful with Mother Nature's seasonal blanket. At present the Kyoto Accord controversy is revealing what we are doing to our air and climate and our winter blanket may be gone before we know it. The joy of not having to shovel snow will be short-lived when we can't slake our thirst with a drink of natural and unpolluted water.
