DailySusan Humor Blog

THE WONDER OF SNOWFLAKES

“How full of the creative genius is the air in which these are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 1856

It’s snowing today, and there are six or eight inches already on the ground. We’ve shoveled and sledded, and run outside with a piece of black fabric and a magnifying glass to “catch snowflakes” and once again thrill to the fact that each one is a little different.

“Just like people,” the child of the house exclaims. She gets it, because we’ve been boning up on the subject.

We have been enjoying a book, “The Snowflake: Winter’s Secret Beauty” by Kenneth Libbrecht, head of the physics department at Cal Tech. He’s an expert on the free oscillations of the sun and stars, ultra-cold atomic gases, the detection of gravitational radiation, and all that kind of stuff.

But what endears him to me, besides all the marvelous information he shares about snowflakes, is that he admits freely that science still cannot fully explain the mystery of how they are created. I like that. Snowflakes make us look up, past the drifts, past the clouds, to the Artist who sends ‘em.

I also love the many beautiful photographs of snowflakes in the book. They were taken by Patricia Rasmussen, who bought camera equipment on eBay one day and started taking snow-crystal photos. She almost fell backwards at her first look at a snowflake on the viewfinder – it was that beautiful.

Ice stars . . . fern-like dendrites . . . hollow columns . . . needles . . . 12-sided ones . . . quadruple-deckers . . . chandeliers. . . .

They’re wonderful and delicate, exquisite and mysterious, and each one’s unique. Just like people, all right.

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Prayer request: The mother of my friend Mary has had complications post-surgery. She has fluid in her lung and may have had a heart attack yesterday. Lord, send the Breath of Life to gently and surely fill her lungs with Your precious air, and quiet her heart to return to its steady rhythm. (Ephesians 3:12)