Snowmen can makes us forget

Have you made a snowman yet this year? We have had few snows this year that are suitable for the creation of crowds of creatures made out of the frozen crystals that float down from the heavens.
I have always wondered about the snowmen that populate the comics pages in the newspaper. The characters in the Peanuts cartoons create legions of snowmen, yet the ground around them is always unblemished and blanketed in snow.
In the old Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin often built armies of impossible frozen creatures who would surely fall over if anyone were to try to recreate them. Apparently the laws of physics don’t apply to a fictional world.
Snow has to be exactly right for proper packing. Too dry and fluffy and it won’t form a ball. Too wet and heavy and it soaks the gloves and becomes ice instead of snow. The perfect sculpting material is close to its melting point. Thus, snowmen seem to crop up on a sunny afternoon when children want to do anything except stay indoors for one more minute.
Snowmen and women come and go every year. They are ethereal by definition, that’s what makes them so special. Who doesn’t smile when they see the traditional three giant snowballs piled on top of each other? If you are all grown up, doesn’t a smiling snowman remind you of when you were young?
On the other hand, the giant inflatable snowmen seen in front of some businesses can be creepy or pathetic, depending on how much air is blowing around inside of them. On a recent trip, I spied one of these creatures. His top half was bowed under a thick layer of snow and he looked like he would rather be anywhere else than on that front lawn. I felt sorry for him, having to smile while his top half flopped in the frigid wind.
Unlike sand or even ice, snow is rarely formed into intricate art. It may be piled into a cone shape instead of round balls or into two spheres instead of three. But the end result is usually a friendly creature. The features can be as simple as holes poked into the finished head, or as elaborate as the builder wants them to be. Scarves are optional, as are hats. Food coloring can add an unintentionally macabre element.
As they concentrate the cold in their snowy hearts, they tend to hang around longer than the rest of the snow on the ground. When they disintegrate, they melt into cone-shaped blobs and finally into nothingness; leaving behind only their clothes and other accessories.
But they also leave something unexpected behind. When they were created they inadvertently picked up soil, excess lawn fertilizer and other things from the ground. As the snowman melts, it redeposits the soil, fertilizer and other stuff. Who knew a snowman could benefit your sleeping plants?
Snowmen have been around as long as people have played with snow. There is no proof of this, of course, as snow melts. There will never be a La Brea tar pit filled with fossilized snowmen. In areas where snow rarely melts, the earth, itself, will obliterate our creations and resculpt the snow into the windblown shapes it prefers.
Nothing stays the same. Snowmen make us happy. They make us forget for a moment, that our lives can be as brief and ethereal as that of the creatures we mold out of crystallized water.[[In-content Ad]]