Snow Tunnels, version two

Snow Tunnels

version two

Bob Komives

Outside,  for hours and days I would tunnel in snow, carve out a frozen world of passage way, shelter, castle,  fort, and igloo.

I would shovel snow into a large pile in the back yard, or make use of a pile my father had made as he shoveled out the alley behind our garage. I had friends, but this was my time to play alone. Seldom would those I did invite show necessary enthusiasm and endurance.

Inside,  for lunch,

the radiator melted the balls of snow on today's stiff, frozen mittens or jersey gloves, making them limp and wet, while yesterday's waited warm and dry.

Back out after bowl of soup for afternoon's tunneling.

A coal shovel was the tool--no bigger than I, but big enough to make my work productive. Finer work I d with bare hand or coffee can, but my work was never fine enough.

I never made the perfect tunnel, nor perfect igloo, nor finished castle. Yet,  for so long as cold and snow and mittens held, I went out most days to try.

Some days I overworked my quota of dry clothes and mittens. Some days there was too little snow, or the Minnesota cold was too bitter. I did not object when my mother bade me stay in.

During inside days perfection came imagined. On bed or living-room rug. I played with toy figures across snowfields visible only to me. I made believe my way to architectural perfection:  snow walls carved thin  to let sun in  to glimmer like cathedral window.

Outside imagination differs from inside imagination. Snow and cold are real. They were my immediate environment for a few months each year. My skills at tunneling were clumsy but improving. I only need imagine that the world outside my snow tunnel was free of back doors leading to warm kitchens, hot bowls of soup and motherly protection.

During outside daydream time, alone in a snow tunnel, I would imagine my life if real life included the tunnel. How fun it would be to be an expert among people who live in snow.

When I grew big enough to be in fourth grade I found out about children who actually lived in the snow. They were Netsook and Klaya of Baffin Island, north of Canada and west of Greenland. I read about them in Visits In Other Lands, my 4th grade geography book at Saint Columba School. I never forgot them, but I had forgotten the name of their book until my sister found and remembered the book  in an antique store during a visit to my home in Colorado. She gave the book to me, knowing I would treasure it and even read it again. This time I read the Foreword To The Teacher and discovered that these were imaginary children. The brother and sister in each chapter were created by the authors to give us an idea of different environments that challenge peoples of the earth and shape their cultures. In fourth grade I did not know these lofty goals, I only wished I could learn and do what these children knew to do. Unfortunately, I lived among people who look out to snow, rain, fog, and darkness from warm, bright kitchens. 

In the world of my people, I often became bored with my inside toy figures and their perfect snow structures, or found myself satisfied with plans for tomorrow's tunnel. 

During such days I would spend hours under kitchen furniture. I became expert in chairs. Four or five high-back wooden chairs became cockpit, wings and fuselage. I built airplanes and flew the sky.

My mother seemed content to work around her obstruction. Now, I realize that as long as I was under foot in my airplane she need not worry about what trouble I was making. Back then, I just knew she was patient and kind. Mostly, I did not notice her.

Kitchens require concentrated imagination. Chairs look nothing like airplanes. Linoleum floor is neither cloud nor sky. Nor should there be radio, hissing pots, telephone rings, nor sky-walking, loud-talking visitor giants.

I am sure I spent more time in my kitchen airplane than in my backyard snow tunnels. The airplane was as good for a rainy day in summer as for a winter day that was too mild or too bitter. I know I loved my kitchen-chair airplane, gave piloting more time than tunneling. Yet, I remember snow tunneling better and miss it more.

For my daughters I once shoveled snow on top of snow on top of table, a marvelous mound for a marvelous igloo. I tunneled part way in before putting them and their friends to tunneling. From inside the house, I could glimpse now and then of their tunneling. It was a day for remembered joy and envy.

In Colorado I discovered the joy of summer in the back country.

 

For a long while I thought I would also enjoy snow camping--fulfillment of my childhood fantasy. Away from back doors and warm kitchens, I could live for a few days each winter in and around a snow cave, a tunnel I made out of necessity in a real world of snow. I held to that fantasy of winter perfection until a friend reminded me that the winter night is fifteen hours of darkness. For Netsook and Klaya a winter day would be all night. If they had a choice would they choose to spend even fifteen hours, night after night, in their igloo? This is not for me to know, but the question alone was enough to melt my dream. I would learn how to make a snow cave for a real emergency, not fulfillment of fantasy.

Today, a winter day, inside among fantasy of youth and practicality of adulthood, I look out into cold and snow wishing dining room chairs to be large enough to be for me a good airplane.

Bob Komives :: Fort Collins © 2006 :: Snow Tunnels, version two :: 1614