Story snow

After struggling through March snow in the back fields – snow on ice on snow, frozen ruts and hummocks, hardened tracks that hold you up until you posthole down 18 inches in a soft spot – I was inspired to explore the language of snow. I knew that the Sami people of northern Scandinavia and the North American Inuit have many words for snow and ice, but I didn’t know that the language with the most snow-words of all (420!) is Scots. Here are a couple of good ones:
 
Feefle: verb. To swirl like snow
Flindrikin: noun. A slight snow shower

I think we should adopt more snow words into English, not just for variations in snowfall (fat clusters, icy sleet, drifting flakes, driving blizzards) but for the snow on the ground. There is sticky snowman snow, light fluffy snow (the most fun to walk through), heavy sandlike snow (the least fun to shovel off the driveway), snow with hardened crust on top (treacherous for dogs and humans without snowshoes). So many varieties.
 
My favorite is story snow, snow that reveals worlds to us we normally don’t see. This kind of snow tells about the blowing wind, snowclumps fallen from tree branches, and the prolific traffic patterns of non-human creatures. After a story snow you see exactly where the mice travel in and out of the barn, where a cat went into the garage, where the fox walks in my snowshoe tracks for ease of passage.
 
The other day I saw this scene (photo above) in a patch of snow. What happened here? Something dramatic between a winged creature and one with paws.  
 
Dogs may  “see” these trails year-round with their noses, but we humans are dependent on sight. Certain winter days remind us of the many lives whose world we share. They are busier even than we are, struggling, foraging, fighting, dying. The signs are all there while we stroll past, oblivious, until there’s a dusting of story snow.