The Snowman [Philosopher]

*Two philosophers standing side by side


Snowman-building. I have not had such fun for the longest time. I remember back in Grade 6: that year it was one of the craziest snowstorms in Vancouver's recorded history. The snow was up to my hips; although it was not the first time I had seen great amount of snow, the feelings were the same - one of excitement and rapture. My brothers and I helped our Father (who was still young!) shoveling one half of the driveway. With the other half, we first built a snowfort, then, abandoning it (as any adventurous knights would abandon safety in order to live a life of danger), we each massed up huge amount of snow, and slowly but surely we built ourselves a pair of twin snowmen. While the snowmen were destroyed by some naughty youngsters the next day, the images of the snowmen were preserved by one photograph, and the joy of the day was engraved into my memory.

Those images no matter concern me as a grown young man; the joy of the day, however, lasted through the many winters. When I spontaneously decided to (re)build the snowman, I was merely trying to outbuilt my neighbours, who built a mere snow-child. But once the building process started, a sense of joy - that sense of joy - came back to me. So despite the harsh labour I had to exert on pushing the body of the snowman, the toil became great joy. I felt that I was like a child, like Alpha - open, innocent and carefree. I had Math 12 to review and a 3000 word paper on Wordsworth due on Monday, but I did not care. I concentrated on my snowman: thus was my strange Wordsworthian intercourse with Nature - I was all alone, not in the sense of physical solitude (my brother was with me), but in a metaphyscal sense of feeling Nature's presence. You can imagine the joy I felt if you picture a little kid crouched down and slowly rolled his snowball, from a fist size to the size of a medicine ball. You cannot help but smile - I cannot help but smile the entire time I was rolling my little snowball!

When the work was done; when the gloves were completely wet; when the snowman was dressed; when the pictures were taken; then there was a moment of silence - between the snowman and I. This strange solitude - I have realized that we were both tired of human noises, and were listening to the beautiful harmony of the totality of the Presence of Nature, Nature's Being. The joy I was feeling was now stripped of its bodily activity; it was joy transcendental, a kind of joy manifested in my intellectual love for Nature. Slowly I left my snowman. As I was leaving I cannot help but think that the silence and solitude outside will do my philosopher snowman much good - He can recollect his emotions in tranquility, transcends his bodily existence and be one with Nature. (I do mean this quite literally if he melts tonight...)

"Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought,
That giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting Motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of Childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up the human Soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
but with higher objects, with enduring things
With life and nature, purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying, by such discipline,
Both pain and fear; until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart."

~William Wordsworth, from The Prelude, I, 401-414