Watching Snow

It snowed again last night. I’d been preparing for my moot, but when I saw it coming down outside, I switched off the lights, opened the window, and sat on the sill to watch.

You know what I love most about watching snow? It’s how when you start paying attention to individual flakes, you can see them responding to eddies and swirls of currents in the air; some do rebellious dizzying spirals even as they plunge groundwards, others do leisurely meanders along some invisible skyway, and some just fall up. Sometimes you can see an influential current at work, and a flurry of flakes bank and swoop and waft as one, caught up in a fleeting dance we’re not allowed to be part of, to music we cannot hear.

I’m entranced by the idea of being at the mercy of the wind, swept along in a blinding headlong surge where you don’t know where the next heartbeat will be. A fairground ride without the comforting solidity of the seat beneath you or the restraint holding you down, just some crazy zephyr laughing maniacally as he writes words in the air with a capricious finger, and you radiant in his wake like the residual trail of a sparkler.