When it snows in the city

Last week it snowed. We get excited by snow, maybe because for as long as snow lasts, we sense a connection to an older version of the world, a time before cities, when poodles were still wolves, horses unbroken, cattle undomesticated, when we drank no other animal’s milk and symmetry was a rare occurrence. When it snows, nature reclaims what once was hers. Snow covers the concrete, the asphalt, the pavements, the cars, the strict urban lines, the perfect circles and curves, the artificial habitat we constructed for us because we thought we know better than nature. Everything looks beautiful covered in snow. At last our eyes rest on a scenery predominantly natural, the snow smooths the urban edginess as our civilized habitat is concealed under an ephemeral thin layer of icy elegance. Underneath the city still exists. That is a reassuring thought, now, isn’t it? What is familiar, is still there, this is just a break, a glimpse of a past version of the world, a what – if moment.

The elation we feel when it snows is a brief return to our origins, much like a walk in the park, where nature again dominates what we see. In the park, we look around, we inhale, we register the amplitude of natural stimuli and yearn for something long lost without being able to identify exactly what it is. But a snowfall never lasts, so let us savour its brief beauty before it dissolves into half-melted stretches of trampled snow, grimy ice, wet concrete, and scattered rubbish, before the buried filth resurfaces. Let’s feel closer to our roots, let’s preserve these images for eternity, because who knows when it will snow again? So, just like we do in the park, we look through the lens of our mobile phones, capture the image we intend to preserve, preferably with our smiling face in the foreground, and post the selfie on social media to claim the scenery as ours. We were there. We were part of nature, look, we have proof. We constantly need proof for everything nowadays.

The light is also different when it snows. In the daytime clouds turn into a muddled orange, heavy with delicate white particles ready to fall on earth. When it is really cold, the snowflakes sometimes fall in tiny unique crystals. It’s like magic but it’s not. It's physics, it’s symmetry and we humans love symmetry. We also love glistering things. That’s another reason why we love snow. Each glimpse of light is reflected on the snow. Beautiful. Unique. Eery, especially in the night. The night is never dark when it snows and we humans love light. We cannot survive in the darkness. That’s where evil things are lurking,where fear takes over, darkness is the unknown. So snow is good, snow keeps the darkness at bay, snow is soothing, snow illuminates.

In the daytime, our wheels, our hands, our steps, our shovels, our salt and sand, our stone chippings scar the white beauty. They inflict dirty blemishes, symmetrical, straight disturbances on the snow as we strive to return to our habitual patterns, to our familiar urban hectic. We do appreciate the odd occurrence of a snowfall, of course we do, but we need the reassuring firmness of a pavement beneath the soles of our shoes. We have distanced ourselves from our element, the earth. First we named it “dirt”, “soil” implying she is filthy, drawing a verbal line between us and nature. Then we put a layer of concrete, of asphalt of cobblestone on top of her, a clear partition, a border between civilisation and wilderness, even if wilderness is where we came from, what we are. And that wasn’t enough. We began wearing shoes, increasing further the distance. Why did we do that? And why is it so unthinkable to step with our bare feet on the soil? What is it, that we are afraid of? What do we dislike? Of course out pampered feet would never endure a return to nature, it's too late now, so we decisively stride on through the urban landscape in our trainers, in our sneakers, in our boots, in out high heels, in our stilettos, in our brogues, in our loafers, in our ballerinas, in our shoes, and get sidelined and excited by the arrival of snow, an unexpected occurrence creeping between the layers of barriers we have created, disrupting the precarious order we have built: Dirt, then concrete, then shoe, then sock, then foot.

The snow absorbs the urban clamour. It is still there, sure it is, but dampened, less present. No constant zooming of cars, no honking, just a gentle buzz somewhere far in the background. No hurried steps can be heard, only cautious ones, eager to crunch into fluffy snow or testing the firmness of the trampled ice. Sometimes we have the impression that we can actually hear each and every one of the snowflakes falling and merging into the vast snow blanket. How does a snowflake sound? It’s mighty like a whisper. Slow down. Go back. Long ago, you took the wrong way. Slow down. Go back. Back. New sounds can be heard. Shovels scratching the ice, boots crunching in the snow, car wheels sliding on ice or squeezing the packed snow through the riles of the tyres, crushing it. But eventually the urban giant slows down, because beauty is dangerous. It’s slippery. It’s unnerving. It’s tricky. It’s new and it shouldn’t be. Snow has been around since the dawn of time.

So we sit there in our heated cars, or stand at the edge of the road in our polyester winter jackets and at last become aware of nature’s power. Nature will kill us if we don’t wear a jacket. Nature will kill us if we fall into the river. The short, pricking sensation of a snowflake landing on our face is a reminder of her power. Walking in a snowstorm, even a mild one, striving to keep our eyes open, is another reminder. There's a beauty in this almightiness. We feel this awe when we step on the frozen river. We admire the vast body of water that once was inaccessible and now it’s just a huge territory of new prospects and experiences right under our toes. Or should I say our boots? Youngster are sliding around in ice-skates, dogs roll enthusiastic on their backs against the frozen surface, they are closer to nature after all, they didn’t construct a symmetrical world to live in like we did. We are balancing hesitant on the frozen water, red cheeks and shiny eyes. Happy. Some of us jump and stamp, stubbornly trying to crack the ice beneath our feet. Is the river still flowing underneath the ice? Will it try to claim us? How many layers are there? Dirt, water, ice, sole, sock, foot... Nothing happens. The ice doesn’t budge. The river doesn’t react. Nature can’t be bothered by our microscopic feet trying to leave their mark. The river is lurking in the depth. In the darkness. Its time will come soon. The snow rarely lasts for long.

Nature has a healing power. We scarred the uninterrupted sheet of snow with footsteps? No problem. Nature will cover it up so that no one can know we were here. She’ll flood with weeds an unmaintained road till there’s hardly any remands of its existence. She’ll send tree branches through abandoned houses, roots through their foundations, waves will swallow forgotten piers and neglected boats, salt and corals will transform a shipwreck into a playground for marine life. She’ll obliterate our instinctive urges to alter our environment, to manipulate it, to conquer it, to posses it, to make it symmetrical. What is it with us and symmetry? Symmetry rarely comes across in nature and when is does, it is something magical. Maybe that’s why we decided to replicate it and make it dominant in our artificial urban space.

It is this urge to conquer nature that has brought us here, that has shaped our existence and our urban spaces, and that makes us feel superior. But what can be superior than nature? How is it possible to draw a line between us and our very essence? Maybe that’s where the wrong turn in our evolution took place: In the evolution of our values. Wealth, possession, power, individuality, dominance, hierarchy, they undermined and eventually corroded our relationship with our natural surroundings.

Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible to feel superior to nature. How can we fail to see the absurdity of such a notion, the paradox, the futility? Have we deviated so far that we no longer recognize ourselves as a part of nature? And how do we change this status quo? This artificial world we live in is our reality, what evolved through centuries of alienation and distancing from our origins. We easily find our way in the urban labyrinth of strictly geometrical buildings, streets, avenues, we spend our lives in the concrete constructs, we multiply in them, we nurse our babies there, we thrive in this sterile environment, away from nature and we’ve been thriving here for the last centuries. This altered environment is our home, that’s where evolution brought us to and now we cannot imagine out lives without the security of artificiality, of symmetry, of straight lines, of pavements, of walls, of buildings, of winter jackets, of shoes. We accept it all as an axiom: this is modern life. This is our lifestyle. This is progress. But what if we tried to deviate from this path of absolute alienation, to surpass some of its paradoxes, to stop taking our reality for granted? Yet it’s difficult to challenge our very existence, our habits, our way of living, our daily structures, our rhythm, things that have endured for centuries, embedded in artificiality. That’s who we have become, and the future doesn’t look so bright, but when it snows, we are reminded of what we are, what we are missing, what could have been.

When it snows, we feel an unfulfilled sense of being uprooted, unhinged, missing an anchor and yet we are inexplicably elated. This feeling returns every time we swim in the sea, enclosed in nature. Every time we walk in a forest surrounded by trees and nature’s smells and sounds. We long for something that we cannot place. What is it, that our heart is instinctively aching for? Is our heart lamenting the distance from nature we have created throughout our history? Is it lamenting a wrong turn in our evolution? Is it the animal in us, instinctively desiring freedom? It is a feeling that has no name, because it has been forgotten, trampled upon, stifled, tabooed, ignored. We yearn for something lost to us, and snow brings it close, so close, and yet it is still so far...