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OPINION

Walking in a Winter Wonderland
By: Allison B., Westgate Collegiate, Thunder Bay, ON


There’s something about a fresh snowfall on a mild winter day. The air is crisp and clean, and little white clusters of snow dance across your face and trickle into your eyelashes. It’s days like these when bitter old Jack Frost has taken a sick day, that make you appreciate a Canadian winter.

These are the times when the consistency is just right, when the catalyst of water and temperature combine to create a mystical reaction.

Snow, that’s just sticky enough to cling to the hearty green boughs of evergreen and pine trees like a half-peeled banana. Weighed down by the heavy snow, the magical ice-world that would harvest my imagination as a child was born.

Bundled up in my one piece snowsuit — a size too big so that I could fit the bulk of long-johns and pink sweatsuits underneath — my body and soul encased by the thick, glistening white walls of snow and evergreen, I forgot about the digital drug that television was destined to become.

Mr. Dress-up was only available in a cube of plastic and glass, an unattainable hero. But here, I could be a princess, born to rule the Ice Castle, a snow angel in her hideaway, or a pixie dancing on my tip-toes to the rhythm of my own out-of-tune song.

The simple pleasures that snow can bring. The comradery of building a snowman the old-fashioned way with chalky black coal for eyes and a slender, orange carrot for a nose. Pushing with all your might to create the perfect belly for your frozen marshmallow man.

Zipping down a hill on skis or a snowboard, or wobbling knock-kneed in the snow-plow position. This is what we have to experience at our leisure in Canada. People fly from all over the world to get a taste of what we have in our own backyard.

The joy of riding a horse-drawn sleigh with friends and family and the sheer thrill of pushing one of them off into the fluffy white pillows of snow that carpet the path.

Above all, we are fortunate to have a truly white Christmas. No cheesy plastic shreds that don the soap-opera screen. Real live snow. Light and airy, wet and heavy, the kind that hypnotizes drivers on the road with its memerizing beauty, slowly plummeting from the sky, then swiftly being wicked away as it hits the windshield like those hallucinogenic screen-savers. Most often we associate snow with cold, bitter weather, but some of the most memorable times of our lives can be traced back to snow. We all hate it from time to time, but we should enjoy it while it’s here. With global warming becoming a greater threat, snow could become an “endangered species.”

So get out there! Build a snowman! Hop on a snowboard! Make a snow-fort! Act like a kid again. It’s fun, good exercise, and gives you a chance to wear those “hip” one-piece snowsuits again. Okay, maybe not the one piecers.


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