Snowballing

“ The drifts were now up to the bellies of the horses, and growing deeper every moment. The wind had increased to a degree against which they could scarcely stand, and the snow came down in such solid sheets of blinding, dazzling white that they could not see a foot before them, could not keep their eyes open against its pelting fury, might almost as well have been stone blind, as they beat their way, struggling, stumbling, floundering, against the storm. ”

“ Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of snow in clouds from their bent branches. ”

“ The wind roared; the snowstorm had burst upon us. In one moment the dark sky became confounded with the sea of snow; everything had disappeared.
“Well, my lord,” cried the driver, “this is a misfortune; it is a regular snowstorm!”
I looked out of the kibitka; all was storm and darkness. The wind blew with such terrific violence that it seemed as if it were endowed with life. Savelitch and I were covered with snow: the horses ploughed their way onward at a walking pace, and soon came to a standstill.
“Why don’t you go on?” I called out impatiently to the driver. ”

“ No sun is to be seen, and the grey atmosphere casts down the heart, the wind moans and whistles in fitful gusts, the black clouds hang low in threatening masses, now and again a flake of snow drifts in the wind. A storm is near at hand, not the thunder-shower of summer, with warm rain and the kindly sun in ambush, but dark and blinding snow, through which even a gamekeeper cannot see six yards, and in which weary travellers lie down to rest and die. ”

“ We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was difficult to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with frost. ”

“ Our snow-storms as a rule
Aren’t looked on as man-killers, and although
I’d rather be the beast that sleeps the sleep
Under it all, his door sealed up and lost,
Than the man fighting it to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds at roost and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are? ”

“ Winter comes suddenly, arrayed in storms, though to mountaineers silky streamers on the peaks and the tones of the wind give sufficient warning. You hear strange whisperings among the tree-tops, as if the giants were taking counsel together. One after another, nodding and swaying, calling and replying, spreads the news, until at with one accord break forth into glorious song, welcoming the first grand snowstorm of the year, and looming up in the dim clouds and snowdrifts like lighthouse towers in flying scud and spray. ”

“ The day of our exodus was very clear and bright, and the narrow snow-track between our lots was still tolerably hard and safe, though the great thaw had begun, and the deep untrodden [83] snow on either side of the track was fast melting, and every careless step we took plunged us into two or three feet of snow, from which we had to be ignominiously dragged out. It was worse when we sank into holes full of water, and the narrow path treacherously giving way at the edges, we had many of these falls. ”

“ And yet this dry, hard snow is extremely susceptible to the slightest shock, and may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the air. The flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the tinkling of bells, even the conversation of persons going along sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging; and it runs down like grains of sand, growing as it falls, by drawing down with it other beds of snow. It is like a torrent, a snowy waterfall, bursting out suddenly from the side of the mountain ”

“ Instead of at once finding rest like that which falls into the tranquil depths of the forest, it is shoved and rolled and beaten against boulders and out-jutting rocks, swirled in pits and hollows like sand in river pot-holes, and ground into sparkling dust. And when storm winds find this snow-dust in a loose condition on the slopes above the timber-line they toss it flack into the sky and sweep it onward from peak to peak in the form of smooth regular banners, or in cloudy drifts, according to the velocity and direction of the wind, and the conformation of the slopes over which it is driven. ”

“ They will work as long as the thaw lasts, pushing the soft snow with their shoulders to release the young pine and the birches. Then, when the snow crusts, they can browse all along the paths for weeks, tunneling far under.
"We saw our bull the last afternoon as we came down from the cloud cap, and then the white blast cut us off and we had only his trail to follow. When we came to the hill we could still hear him thrashing about in his trails, so I drew down the boughs of a hemlock and made us a shelter and a fire. For two days more the storm held, with cold wind and driven snow. ”

“ A storm, which had been fiercely raging for several days, gave no signs of exhaustion.—The snow, which had been falling for fifty or sixty hours—not in a fleecy shower, but mingled with cutting particles like hail—filled the atmosphere, and with each successive gust of a stiff northwester, was whirled aloft in vast curling sheets and wreaths—or driven through the narrow streets with a force that was blinding and almost irresistible. ”

“ Outside the house the wind, blowing through the trees of the forest, rose and sank in piteous wails and moans, by turns, and the snow fell in angry, fitful blasts, and whirled and turned, eddied and drifted, as if it were a thing of life. ”

“ By-and-by the snow-flakes pile more leisurely: they grow large and scattered, and come more slowly than before. The hills, that were brown, heave into sight—great, rounded billows of white. The gray woods look shrunken to half their height, and stand waving in the storm. The wind freshens, and scatters the light flakes that crown the burden of the snow; and as the day droops, a clear, bright sky of steel color cleaves the land and clouds, and sends down a chilling wind to bank the walls and to freeze the storm. ”

“ AGRIPPA, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. v.
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the rivet and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm."
Emerson. The Snow Storm. ”

“ Slowly it surges on, like a deep groan of rage long controlled only to break out all the more fearfully in raving, annihilating fury. The snow-storm, the first of the year, sweeps down from the Grossortler over the bare trembling heath--a mighty, moving mass rolls on before it that breaks incessantly into powder, and is incessantly renewed--as if the winds had torn the eternal mantle of snow from the shoulders of the numberless glaciers, and were flinging it down from the heights. ”

“ The effect of constant abrasion upon the snow's surface is to harden it, and, finally, to carve ridges known as sastrugi. Of these much will be said when recounting our sledging adventures, because they increase so much the difficulties of travelling.
Even hard, blue ice may become channelled and pitted by the action of drift. Again, both neve and ice may receive a wind-polish which makes them very slippery. ”

“ One winter only had passed since the convulsion that disrupted it, and already the snow was beginning to build up its gaps and chasms. All the summer through, for many hours on clear days, the sun will melt those snows and the frost at night will glaze them into ice. The more conformable ice-blocks will gradually be cemented together, while the fierce winds that beat upon the ridge will wear away the supports of the more egregious and unstable blocks, and one by one they will topple into the abyss on this side or on that. ”

“ If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bomb-shell,—a picture of native spirit and success. ”

“ They afterwards described to us how they raced away like wild men, jumping crevasses which they could not have cleared in cold blood. When the snow just enveloped them, the wind raised by it cast them headlong on the ice. This, however, was the worst that happened. The snow peppered them all over, and soaked them to the skin, but the solid part of the avalanche was happily arrested in the midst of the ice-fall, and never came in sight. ”

“ The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object,—as yonder spire,-and observe how the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the intervening space. ”

“ Clouds of snow cut off our vision of those below. Bellowing sounds rendered the world a turmoil. Swirling gusts of wind, cyclonic, threw us to our faces on the white bank where we clung, digging bleeding fingers into the icy crust of the hillside, and fearful, through wild stretches of time, that we too should be carried downward in that terrific sweep when mountains seemed upending. ”

“ As the snowball war was a serious affair, and was conducted after a scientific fashion, it never commenced until there was a good body of snow upon the ground and pure snow could be gathered up without earth and stones. ”

“ Although the thick trees sheltered them to a large extent from the fury of the storm, which had now nearly assumed the proportions of a blizzard, yet the sharp particles of snow stung their faces like needles whenever an open space allowed the wind to reach them with anything like its full force. ”

“ Any object that broke the wind—a stunted pine, a broken tree-trunk, a Government road-post—had at its leeward side a high, narrow snow-drift tailing off to the dead level of the plain. Where the wind dropped the snow rose at once. ”

“ She merely waits for the setting-in of a great snow-storm—which her instinct warns her of—and then, stretching herself under the lee of a rock—or other inequality, where the snow will be likely to form a deep drift—she remains motionless till it has “smoored” her quite up, often covering her body to the depth of several feet. ”

“ Dazed and exhausted in the gulch below,
For storm-bewildered men will grope around
Describing circles in the blinding snow,
Until they sink, their vital forces spent,
And crystal snowflakes weave their cerement. ”

“ The fate of the high-flying mountain snow-flowers is a fascinating study, though little may we see of their works and ways while their storms go on. The glinting, swirling swarms fairly thicken the blast, and all the air, as well as the rocks and trees, is as one smothering mass of bloom, through the midst of which at close intervals come the low, intense thunder-tones of the avalanches as they speed on their way to fill the vast fountain hollows. ”

“ Our snow-shoes breaking, and sinking to our middle every fifty paces, the scrambling up mountains, and across fallen timber, our nights without sleep or covering, and but little fire, gathered with great fatigue, our sustenance mostly water, and the bark and berries of trees ”

“ It is quite as likely that the open lands are still under the worn and dusty blanket of snow, smirched with all the litter cast upon it by cross-lot-faring teams, and wintry winds blowing for months from every quarter. The same untidiness pervades all outdoors. We could never believe that so many odds and ends could have been thrown out of doors helter-skelter, in three months of ordinary life, till the proof confronts us on the surface of the subsiding snow or lies stranded on the bare earth. ”

“ A wind rose and drove the multiplying snowflakes in whirls and eddies before it. The icicles ceased to drip, but one or two broke and fell with a weak tinkling. A deep soughing, a shuddering groaning of trees and shrubs, came ever and again out of the ravine, and the powdery snow blew like puffs of smoke from the branches.
By four the fire was out, and the snow was piling high in the darkling twilight against tent and hut.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ A sharp north wind shook the bare branches of the trees that grew thick on both sides of the way, blew the snow in the ravines, and heaped it to huge snow-drifts, which threatened the traveller unacquainted with the locality with danger.
The wind grew every moment more sharp and cutting, the snow deeper, and the difficulty greater for the tired horses to draw their weary load. ”