My windshield wipers were scraping back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to clear the snow now accumulating quicker than the blades could clean that icy debris. I was squinting to make sure I was keeping in the center of my lane. My winter weather muscle memory was kicking in: no jerky movements with the steering wheel, eyes fixed ahead, slow down for turns, don’t slam on the breaks if I start to skid.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I eased into my garage, my car by then covered with freshly fallen snow.
Snow can be frightening if you’re traveling. It’s certainly not your friend. It can be your mortal enemy if you’re stuck on I-95 in Virginia for over twenty-four hours or more than six hours on I-75 in Kentucky, as many were for this, the first real snowstorm of the winter.
I was grateful that my little journey was only a few miles from home.
After my wife greeted me, I stepped outside, just a moment, to feel the snow on my face.
Most of all, I wanted to hear the silence of the snow.
The snow was quietly laying its blanket over the brown leaves and dead grass where my garden is planted in spring, hushing to sleep the fallow ground and the back yard surrounding it. Only moments before, people were scurrying to get home before the snow accumulated more. Now all was eerily calm with only the snow falling on me and my surroundings. In a matter of moments, it seemed like the snow had enforced a lockdown on all our activities.
I seem to hear better while the snow softly falls. In the past, I’ve hiked in the snow. I’m far from being a tracker or a hunter, but I’ve heard owls screeching, deer brushing through bushes, a flush of duck flapping across a pond, tree limbs creaking—all while the snow was finding places to rest or drift, all while my footsteps were making crunching sounds as I made my path through the snow.
Science has an explanation for the silence of the snow. There is more air between the fresh individual snowflakes, and therefore, the snow is more porous, making it absorb sound easier, like the way sound insulation works in a sound booth or the absorbent material on the walls of theatres. Those materials are mechanically designed to minimize sound. Snow does it naturally.
So, as I watch the snowfall, I take in the minimal sound, the silence of the snow, which is like moisturizing lotion for the soul.
In his book, Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom, tells about his former professor at Brandeis University, Morrie Schwartz, who was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal illness of the neurological system. In one part of that book, Mitch flashes back to an experiment Morrie had done with his sociology class at Brandeis. For fifteen minutes, Morrie sat there in the room with his students, not saying a word. The class was uncomfortably silent. Morrie finally broke the quiet by asking: “What is happening here?.” Then a discussion followed about the effect of silence on human relations.
In the silence, we can find who we really are, our core values, our authentic selves, and thus, discover how we can relate in more meaningful ways to others. We are more apt to name our emotions and relate them more holistically to the significant others in our lives.
As the deceased Trappist monk and contemplative Thomas Merton put it: “It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.”
You certainly don’t have to have snow for that to happen. The desert monks of another era certainly didn’t have snow. But for a novice like me, snow is a catalyst for a refresher course of sorts, one that reminds me to cherish the gift of listening. Snow is a kind of mandated retreat on valuing quietness and solitude, a welcome relief from life’s sometimes mundane routines, a guide for a hitchhiker along those sludgy avenues of life. Unless, of course, you happen to be stranded for hours on I-95 in Virginia or I-75 in Kentucky.