Let it snow, again

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

(11/2023) I would change the snow, make it last forever.

All winters would be white, like they used to be: cold, crisp, sparkling air. Snow-dusted blades of grass, and barren, silhouetted trees. My old home where the sun rose through the kitchen window, golden light bouncing off the glistening frost. The smell of hot chocolate from the kitchen. The ever-telling door that sounded when my dad came home from work: thudding footsteps, keys jingling, setting sunlight following him inside. Frozen flakes clinging to his uniform, whispers of wind before he closed the door. The anticipation you felt when you woke up on a scarlet morning and glimpsed out the windows, a sliver of white blanketing everything you knew.

Snow is threaded in every memory of winter. Sparkling silence, untouched nature. Snow is winter, making up Christmas and New Year’s and all the holidays in those barren months. Snowfall is what makes the winter evenings so romantic, makes the mornings worthy, makes the afternoons slow and hushed as we watch from our windows.

Except we didn’t get any snow last winter.

Instead, we got gray skies and ice-slicken roads. We got a cold Christmas, a mild New Year’s, and a thawing February that felt as though we had already been living in spring for months. But not a single flake of snow. Not a single snow day for students, or a morning we woke up to silence and sparkling sheets in our backyard. While I love the warm weather and the blossoming of spring, I can’t help but grieve for the winters I knew as a child.

Global warming and climate change have become a threat to not only winters, but all seasons as we know them. In an article by How Stuff Works, authors Patrick J. Kiger and Desiree Bowie write, "By the end of this century, spring and summer could begin a month earlier, and autumn and winter might arrive half a month later. Summers could extend to nearly half the year, with less than two months of winter by 2100."

This shocking news asks us to redefine our seasons and slowly let go of what winter once was. Instead of cold months and long nights and snow-dusted mornings, we will start to see milder temperatures, earlier blooming flowers, and less snow in the forecast. Frankly, we are entering a period where we might lose the winters we once had as a child.

"For much of the eastern United States…winter has been a bust," writes Michael Casey in an article on AP News, calling the climate "a winterless winter." The memories we once fondly reminisced upon will soon become an image of the past we can hardly grasp, let alone wish for.

So rather, I would change climate change in general, make it avoidable, perhaps even nonexistent. As a 21-year-old in this society, I dream about my future. I dream about world travel, and marrying the love of my life, and having children, and venturing through the seasons of life much like I do the seasons of the year. I dream about quiet snow days in the same way I dream about sunny summer days. I long for all seasons, for the cold and the warm, for the light and the dark.

But with threatening climate change and the most recent world tensions involving Israel and Hamas putting pressure on the world—as well as other serious global issues such as poverty and economic inequality and hunger—I fear deeply for the future I once idolized as a child.

It makes sense, though. Being born in 2001—the year of our nation’s catastrophic terrorist attacks—my generation’s identity "has been shaped by the digital age, climate anxiety, a shifting financial landscape, and COVID-19" (McKinsey & Company). I remember my childhood as beautiful and wondrous, filled with family. I could spend hours thumbing through the photo albums in my basement: pictures of the playground set in my backyard, the piles of autumn leaves, the blizzard in second grade that called off schools for a week. But my pre-teenage years were characterized by social media (how many likes did I get on Instagram?) and normalized school shootings (where is the best hiding spot in the classroom?) and the dreaded, continuous, irreversible climate change conversation (where have the snow days gone?). Once I graduated high school into a global pandemic, my worldview was shockingly pried open. I have loved college, and I anticipate my future career, but entering the job and housing market and inflated grocery store prices and an earth without winters—it’s terrifying.

Sometimes all I wish for is the snow.

Or rather, I wish for nothing to have changed at all. If I could go back to that townhouse in the corner of my old neighborhood, the one the sun touched every day, the one where all four seasons watched me grow, I would. As an emerging adult with the anxiety of a teenager and the heart of a child, I would give anything to wish away the problems in this world today.

Of course, reality has different plans, ones that we must confront rather than avoid. Although winters might look and feel different, it is important to both preserve what we once knew and act now—take responsibility for our own carbon footprint, and demand action from larger corporations. Demand they take accountability. Wealthy polluters, rich countries, and sometimes, ourselves.

But take a moment to remember your fondest memory of snow. Perhaps it is with your children, on a day off school, dressing them in cozy snowsuits. Watching their little footprints dot the white blanket, smiling as they take off on a sled down a hill. Or perhaps it is with your partner, brewing hot chocolate or sipping wine while you watch the snowfall from a frost-painted window. Perhaps it is with your parents, your friends, yourself. Flakes drifting on Christmas Eve, or a rush of snow in a February blizzard. It’s winter, the silent months. The months we gather together and slow down. The months we desperately need to hang onto, especially now. In this world, in these scary, frightening days, we all need to watch the snow, smell the crisp air moments before the flakes fall.

Read other articles by Claire Doll