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How do we envisage snow?
It is the fragility of Christmas dreams
sintering through azure darkness to the accompaniment of the sound of sleigh
bells...
It is the invitation that glows ephemeral
on a woman’s lashes on a winter night…
It is the sweet gloss of memory in
the failing eyes of the old as they recall the white days of childhood…
It is the gentility of utter silence
in the muffled heart of a snow-clad forest.
It is the brittle wind-rush of skis;
and the bellicose chatter of snowmobiles.
- “The snow walker”, by Farley Mowat
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People born in the middle area of Russia are used to the snow since childhood.
Ryazanov’s song says, “Nature has no bad whether”. The word “summer” gives
us more pleasant reminiscences, than winter mainly because that is the
time of vacations.
In Moscow, especially in the last few years, the winter often means slush
alternating with a glaze of ice on the sidewalks. This time brings a lot
of inconveniences to the residents of big cities. But nobody thinks winter
is a disaster.
“A heavy snowfall in New York, Montreal, Chicago, produces a paralytic
stroke… It chokes the arteries of our highways, blocks trains, grounds
aircraft, fells power and telephone cables”, - Mowat writes. This sounds
strange to a Moscow dweller. I cannot remember anything like this for thirty
three years I lived there. Definitely, in the doubtable “capitalist heaven”
I live now they prepare everything for the winter in a much more irresponsible
way.
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But there in the middle Russia the snow is not just inconvenience. Everyone
knows how it is desirable in late autumn to have snow coat the land, transfigures
dark gloomy streets into something fine, niveous, and warm. Miraculously
the nature of the middle Russia gives us the feeling of something friendly
and comfortable in almost any season. Dwellers on the mountain-heights
or the stuffy south, where leaves are always old, will never understand
it. Further to the north toward the Arctic Circle, there in the Earth’s
most beautiful land. But it isn’t so friendly. The Arctic’s winter nature
rather resembles the cold kingdom of Andersen’s Snow Queen. As in the mountains,
one feels here a dare of nature. |
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I’ve started to learn
skiing when I was four years old. My mother guided me to the Sokolniki
Park to teach it. The very first time I was afraid of each tiny hillock
there. Sokolniki (the word “sokol” means falcon in Russian; in the past,
Russian kings hunted with falcons here) is the really good place to master
skiing. There are a lot of hillocks, slight and steep slopes, small springboards,
and abrupt lakeside. |
When I was in high
school and later in university I could ski 10 – 15 miles easily. It was
so great to get away from the house in the keen frost in –25 or –30°F
and ski for two-three hours.
In 1981, when I took
my first walking tour – so called “planned” route in the south Karelia
(near the Petrozavodsk town) – it wasn’t too hard. |
| The
list of the ski routes |
| “The ski-man! Hundreds of kilometers
away from the house, in the virgin forest the camping fire inflames… To
see the stars when going to sleep, to meet the sunrise on the ski-run where
pink light lies upon the snowy rocks”
- “Among the Elements”, by Alexander Berman
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Somewhere, in this day, the snow is
falling…
It may be settling in great flakes
on a calm night over a vast city; spinning cones of distorted vision in
the headlights of creeping cars and covering the wounds, softening the
suppurating ugliness inflicted on the earth by modern man…
Or the snow may be slanting swiftly
down across a cluster of tents huddled below a rock ridge on the arctic
tundra. Gradually it enfolds a pack of dogs who lie, noses thrust under
bushy tails, until the snow covers them completely and they sleep warm…
Somewhere the snow is falling.
- “The snow walker”, by Farley Mowat
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