We had our first big snowstorm of the season this week. A few inches of snow fell over the course of two and a half days, and the world was transformed seemingly overnight. Dying grass and stark, leafless trees were suddenly layered under a white blanket of snow-themed cliches you’ve probably heard a thousand times by now.
Still, it’s a cliché that’s based on a truism: the shift in landscape, happening so quickly, is magical. Literally transformative. One moment we are here, and the next, we are still here but ‘here’ is someplace different. We don’t need to have moved from our spot. The world has changed around us.
Snow and slush and ice are a mess to drive through, and I’m not a big fan of the cold, but I never get tired of this dramatic turning of the seasons.
It’s probably for the same reason I love fantasy. It is a shift into a new world. A thrilling, dizzying change in perspective. It is our landscape transforming, and we—sometimes without even knowing it—transform with it.
Jennifer Hykes 