Journals

"Winter Is Icumen In"

December 3, 2012   

Darn it, y’all, I think I missed the timing for the obligatory “it’s SNOWING!” journal entry – mostly because the snow has melted and it hasn’t reached below freezing all day. (Not that this southern girl’s complaining.) Still, it would have been nice if I had thought to snap a few photos of how pretty campus looked this past week.

Much like with autumn, there’s something magical about winter at Hamilton (even though I deeply dislike snow and cold weather). There’s nothing more entrancing than waking up to a silent, frost-blanketed campus, the color of the ground matching the color of the sky, only trees and buildings to disrupt the white expanse. Even my fellow students, who have grown up with white Christmases and are master snowball fighters, are oddly quiet on those first snowy days – almost reverent, in a way.

And then, as the day wears on, footprints scatter across the quads, trailing after harried students and professors on their way to class. Every now and then a snowman appears, on display like an art major’s sculpture for all of campus to admire. Occasionally, people let their inner 10-year-olds take hold, and more ambitious projects get started outside of the dorms, and then abandoned halfway through. (Last year, my roommate attempted to build an igloo with a friend; it ultimately became Stonehenge, which we all agreed was better, and lasted for weeks.)

There are days, like all of this past week, that I can’t help but feel like I live in a promotional brochure. The real world isn’t supposed to look like this; the idea of the “winter wonderland” is a Hollywood conspiracy, isn’t it? Apparently not.