Snow is the most iconic and idyllic of winter’s hallmarks. It brings with it bitter complaints from the Breconites (the residents of the most remote dorm, among whose number I count myself), delight from many of the students (including me), and, sometimes, fairly earned disgruntlment from faculty and staff. While snow beautifies the campus, turning the already magical appearance of the neo-gothic and oxford styled buildings into a completely different, enchanted scene.

For me, even when I’m not on campus and do have an obligation to shovel snow, I generally delight in winter storms, swirls of white gusting into the air after the snowfall is complete, flakes dusting every traveler through the fall, the morphing textures of snow from newly fallen, whether fluffy or heavy, to re-frozen after a partial thaw.

Part of my love of snow is surely the evocation of delights from my childhood: snowcream (a mixture of milk whisked quickly into the snow, with vanilla or other flavoring, making flavored milky snow), holding my mouth open to catch snowflakes on my tongue, snowmen, snow angels, snow fights with my little sister, and, above all, the thrill of whizzing down a well-worn sled track.

Indeed, some days when work is too heavy and snowfall plentiful, it feels like a taunt, as if to say, look, see, if you had less to do you could go sledding, you could feel the rush of air against your face. And yes, you’d never get a track as good as the ones you made in your late childhood and teens when you’d spend six hours packing down a track with your sister, packing it down until the ancient wooden sled would carry you so fast between the banks of the trail that your eyes stung and watered. But you could still feel some of that exhilaration. But even on most of those days, the snow coated world seems like a promise of renewal, hidden joy, and promise.

So it was with great delight that I watched not even twice, but thrice, the snow fall, blanketing the campus in a sheet no more than three inches at the deepest, yet still enough to transform the paths familiar to me from my years on campus during the fall semester. And there again, I stood last Saturday, as the snow fell from the sky like a promise that all is always changing and fresh and that always a magical view of the world is possible.

Two weekends ago, as the snow fell, I remembered the promises I made myself for the new year and the new semester: I promised to work hard, start my work promptly, exercise more, see more of my friends, spend time outside, spend more time enjoying life and campus, and work on my thesis.

And now, nearly a third of the way into the semester, I find that though I’ve not been perfect, I have kept most of my promises. I have started my geology thesis, by writing the application I need for the data. I have spent more time with friends and enjoying the campus and being outside. I have often spent Saturday evenings in conversation and laughter. I have often lingered to watch the red-tailed hawk that haunts a tree on one of my regular routes across campus. I have worked hard, and I have often started my work early. On the other hand, I have not been more active. I have not always started my work when I should. I have sometimes hurried when I should have stood still and watched. I have been slow-moving when I should have been fast. But overall, I am moving toward the promises I make myself, and those the world makes me.