Snow bank

“ On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men's blood, I hear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England north-east snow storm, and I behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe. ”

“ In winter, numbers collect on a snow-bank, and swallow small pieces, either to slake thirst or for pleasure. On such occasions, and generally when collecting food, they keep up a continual chattering, which renders their places of haunt easy of discovery. ”

“ As a rule, they exist, breed and sleep in the open, the soft side of a drifting snow bank being a luxury, especially if it drifts about them up to the muzzle, and it is only vacated when dangerous. They seek the warmest spots they can find, a rope coil, rag or paper, or even a tin can to lie on, in preference to ice or hard snow. Failing in this, they will dig a hole in the soft snow and bury themselves in this, lying one on top of the other in bitter weather. ”

“ Next morning we started on our return journey, but with only one horse, as the grey belonged to a party at Teviot, and we expected to get a bank horse that was turned out at a place near Teviot. When we reached there, found that the horse could not travel. Yates determined to go on ‘ride and tie.’ The latter operation was effected with the aid of snow-poles, which a thoughtful Government had provided to guide travellers over this wild range. The snow was heavy under foot, and dense in the air, and we blessed these poles. ”

“ In the depth of winter the steep bank becomes a glare of coated ice and sand and snow strangely intermixed. Sand covers snow till the new surface seems a secure part of the land, and then a new snow hides the deceit from view. It can be extraordinarily treacherous under foot. ”

“ Sliding up you run into the air, and that isn't very hard, and coming down you land in a great snow bank—but this place here is much pleasanter, because it's warmer, and you don't have to exert yourself. ”

“ A bank of snow may be either a cause of destruction or a source of comfort. Of course, a certain degree of cold must exist wherever snow is to be found; but, unless in absolute contact with the human body, it does not usually affect the system beyond a certain point. On the other hand, it often breaks the wind, and it has been known to form a covering to flocks, houses, &c., that has contributed essentially to their warmth. ”

“ Not once nor twice, but a dozen times, the man’s anxious gaze had swept up to that great overhanging bank. Snowslides ran every year in this section with heavy loss to life and property. Given a rising temperature and some wind, the comb above would gradually settle lower and lower, at last break off, plunge down the precipitous slope, bringing thousands of tons of rock and snow with it, and, perhaps, bury them in a Titanic grave of ice. There had been a good deal of timber cut from the shoulder of the mountain during the past summer, and this very greatly increased the danger. ”

“ The snow was in perfect condition, soft and moist; every particle clung to the ball, which grew bigger and bigger and BIGGER and BIGGER!
At last Rita’s arms were tired, and she stopped to rest and to look about her. She was at the end of the lawn, where the bank sloped up to the stone wall. How nice it would be if she could roll the Great Snowball up the bank, and push it to the top of the wall!
Then Papa would see it when he came home to dinner, and he would be so ’stonished! he would say, “Who—upon—yerth—put that great, hugeous snowball there?” And Rita would say, “I did, Pappy! ”

“ The snow on the high mountains is melting fast, and the streams are singing bank-full, swaying softly through the level meadows and bogs, quivering with sun-spangles, swirling in pot-holes, resting in deep pools, leaping, shouting in wild, exulting energy over rough boulder dams, joyful, beautiful in all their forms. No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull, or any trace of what in manufactories is called rubbish or waste; everything is perfectly clean and pure and full of divine lessons. ”

“ Sometimes we swept triumphantly to the bottom; at other times we would collide with some hidden obstacle, and describe each a separate trajectory into the snow-banks. We made enormous snow-balls by beginning with a small one and rolling it over and over in the soft snow till it waxed too vast for our strength; two or three of these piled one on another would be sculptured by the author of The Scarlet Letter into a snow-man, who would stand stanch for weeks. Snow-storms in Lenox began early and lasted till far into April. ”

“ Before the travelers lay one of the most beautiful valleys they had ever seen. Gently sloping hills led down to green fields. Through the middle of the valley flowed a stream that looked like a shimmering blue ribbon stretched out on a green carpet. On the near bank of the stream, in the very center of the valley, stood a castle. Its spires, turrets, and towers were so delicately formed that they glistened like lace-filigree in the sunlight.
Twink's eyes glowed. "Isn't it just the most beautiful sight you ever saw!" she exclaimed.
"It certainly is elegant," admitted the Shaggy Man. ”

“ At least, David did that while Nell unlashed the load and got out the sleeping bags, the bacon and frying-pan, and big, thick stockings to change into in case their feet were damp--which always was the case, and might mean frost-bite or, at least, serious chill, unless attended to.
They regularly walled themselves in from the forest. On one side was the rock wall, on the other the sled turned up on its side, and so making rather a good barrier in between the snow scraped up into a high fence, while the fourth side was open to the river--their icy, snow-covered road. ”

“ Yet we see big stacks of firewood piled near each farmhouse door; we see the cabin newly banked with earth against the frost; at blacksmith’s shop we see men hammering on well-used sled; alongside the road, awaiting the winter’s need, lies an upturned snowplow newly ironed; everywhere men are making ready for the cold. In a fortnight the highway across the Haukeli Fjeld will be blocked with new-fallen snow. In a month the jingling bells of sleighs and sledges will sound along the now verdant valley of the Baegna Elv. ”

“ In February, 1934, we were snowbound for three days but lived in comfort, thanks to a minimum reserve supply and, by a happy coincidence, liberal marketing done the morning the storm began. Several neighbors took to snowshoes and skis and so made their way to the nearest store to replenish essentials like milk, meat, eggs and the like. Winter sports are a great institution, but trudging two miles for a quart of milk across a countryside waist deep in newly fallen snow is too great a mixture of business and pleasure. ”

“ All the old barns and sheds and display buildings that have been falling to pieces on account of being out of repair make the swellest kind of kindling wood and the flames, helped out by the wind, are leaping high in the air, sucking out for new things to burn. It’s a great sight.
“Some hot!” shouts Rod, backing up. “Say, it’s melting the ice on our slide!”
It is for a fact! The banks of snow are disappearing along the road, too, on account of the heat.
“Old Crabby must have cast a spell over this hill!” says Pete as we all feel a kind of uncanny feeling creep over us. ”

“ The soft banks which terminate these shelves, traversed by no falling fragments, clothe themselves with richest wood, while the masses of snow heaped upon the ledge above them, in a climate neither so warm as to thaw them quickly in the spring, nor so cold as to protect them from all the power of the summer sun, either form themselves into glaciers, or remain in slowly wasting fields even to the close of the year,—in either case supplying constant, abundant, and regular streams to the villages and pastures beneath, and to the rest of Europe, noble and navigable rivers. ”

“ But the whine and snarl of the wind were the only sounds that came to them, the steady banking of the snow against the windows the only evidence of life. The telegraph line, somewhere between Tabernacle and the country which lay over the bleak, now deadly range, was a shattered thing, with poles buried in drifts, with loose strands of wire swinging in the gusts of the blizzard, with ice coated upon the insulations, and repair—until the sun should come and the snows melt—an almost impossible task. ”

“ In the weeks that followed, Tom and Joe lived a hardy, active life afoot, sometimes going with the Ranger up the high trails to inspect where the early snows first slid, so that he could get a line on the spots in which the most danger to the trails lay.
“My idea is,” he said, “that in some places where we have trouble, making us a lot of work in the spring, the government could plant Arctic willow or limber pines, to hold the snow from sliding, and save a lot of money. I’m going to study snowslides this winter, and make a report.” ”

“ It will be hard for the girls and the women, to say nothing of Tommy and Nellie."
"That's what it will, Russ; but what can be done?"
As he spoke there came a sudden fierce rush of wind and a flurry of snow. It took the breaths of all, and instinctively they turned from it, for the snow stung their faces. The horses, too, disliked to face the stinging blast, and shifted their places.
"Get behind such shelter as you can!" cried Mr. Macksey, above the roar of the storm. "This is a genuine blizzard and it's death to be unprotected. Get into the sleds, and cover up with the blankets. ”

“ But what they need most in the interior is stock farms, horses and beeves, and I am going to take in a fine bunch of both; they'll do fine; winter right along with the caribou and reindeer."
"Well, that's a new idea to me," exclaimed Daniels. "Alaska to me has always stood for blizzards, snow, glaciers, impregnable mountains, bleak and barren plains like the steppes of Russia, and privation, privation of the worst kind."
Banks nodded grimly. "That's because the first of us got caught by winter unprepared. Why, men freeze to death every blizzard right here in the States ”

“ It is hard to realize that, a few months from now, when winter begins, this railroad must perforce cease its operations. Snow falls, here, where the sun is now smiling so beneficently upon laughing meadows, dotted here and there with dainty flowers, to a depth of ten and even twenty feet. The mail—necessarily much reduced in winter—is first of all carried in sleighs, then, as the snows deepen, on snow-shoes, so that those who stay to preserve the "summer hotels" from winter's ravages may not feel entirely shut out from the living world beyond. ”

“ The crust of the snow that lay deep over the frozen muskeg and tundra was ideal for sled-travel and, of course, rendered unnecessary the use of snowshoes. All day long the steel-blue, cold fog hung in the north, obliterating the line of the flat horizon. The bitter wind that whipped and tore out of the Arctic died down at nightfall and, for the first time in their lives, the two felt the awful depression of the real Arctic silence. Mountain men, these, used to the mighty uproar of frost-tortured nature. ”

“ But the winter changed these conditions, the rivers became coated with thick ice, and the ground was covered, except in steep places, with an unvarying mantle of snow. Yet transport became just as easy as in the summertime, though perhaps a trifle more fatiguing. Men and women put on snowshoes shaped like tennis rackets, and flew over the hard snow quicker than a canoe could travel, dragging after them small sledges on which their luggage was packed ”

“ Through the canvas, through every stitch or smallest opening, spurts a small flood of the finest snow, like flour out of a flour-mill, or collects itself on the inner surface, where its ever-increasing weight at length brings it down like small avalanches. As long as the storm rages the cold is alleviated from the equalisation of warm air over the sea, though it seldom allows any heat to remain in the tent, so that we were still in a cold of from 14° to 5° F.
“By degrees a covering of snow at least an inch thick lies on the sack, under which we must patiently wait till the storm ceases. ”

“ The tents were on the sledges, and they had only sufficient fuel in the boat to keep a fire alight for one night; while their provisions, with the utmost economy, would last them but a fortnight or three weeks at the furthest.
“If the cold goes on increasing, we shall be frozen to death before the morning,” exclaimed several of the men.
“Not so, mates,” said Andrew. “I have seen the natives build a snow-hut in the course of an hour, and have been as warm as I could wish within it during the hardest frost. ”

“ Deep snows on the range nearly cut off communication with the outer world for three months in the year. By following the high, wind-swept ridge, the mountain could be crossed by a venturesome horseman [Pg 160] till winter came on and the snows grew too deep, when snowshoes must be resorted to. Even late in the summer snowshoes were necessary to travel over the soft masses of the snow which always crowned the summit.
When John presented himself as a candidate for mail rider, Burns, the boss at Ragged Edge, looked at him in good-natured amusement. ”

“ While Virginia cooked lunch, Bill cut young spruce trees and made a sled: and after the meal pushed out through the whirling snow to being in the remainder of the moose meat. It was the work of the whole afternoon to urge the sled up the ridge and then draw it home through the drifts. The snow mantle had deepened alarmingly during the night, and he came none too soon. It was only a matter of days, perhaps of hours, before the snow would be impassable except with snowshoes. Until at last the snowfall ceased and packed, traveling even with their aid would be a heart-breaking business. ”