The Little Book of Snow
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About this ebook
This sweet book includes entries like how to build the perfect snowman, what gives snow its color, and snow-inspired folklore from around the world.
With iridescent white foil and lovely woodblock illustrations throughout, this petite book makes a wonderful gift.
• Features captivating trivia about snow
• Follows delightful traditions about winter wonderlands
The Little Book of Snow is a lovely book for winter sports enthusiasts and anyone who enjoys the magic of a winter wonderland.
• A celebration of the joys of winter
• Makes a holiday book for outdoorsy people, winter sport fanatics, those who live in snowy climates, and anyone who has a cabin.
• You'll love this book if you love books like The History of the Snowman by Bob Eckstein, Snow Play by Birgitta Ralston, and Powder: The Greatest Ski Runs on the Planet by Patrick Thorne.
Sally Coulthard
Sally Coulthard is an expert in nature, rural history and craft. She has published over twenty-five books and her titles have been translated into a dozen languages. She studied archaeology and anthropology at the University of Oxford and worked in television before becoming a writer. She lives on a smallholding in North Yorkshire with her family and writes a column for Country Living magazine called ‘A Good Life’.
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The Little Book of Snow - Sally Coulthard
For James
First published in the United States of America in 2020 by Chronicle Books LLC.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Anima, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © 2018 by Sally Coulthard.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.
ISBN 978-1-4521-8309-1 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4521-8402-9 (epub, mobi)
Typeset by Lindsay Nash.
Illustrations by Ian at KJA Artists.
Chronicle books and gifts are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, literacy prog, and other organizations. For details and discount information, please contact our premiums department at corporatesales@chroniclebooks.com or at 1-800-759-0190.
Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com
CONTENTS
Introduction
Snow Science
Snow Ecology
People and Snow
Living with Snow
Celebrating Snow
Snow Play
About the Author
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
"Snow-flakes,"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
My parents have a photograph of me as a child. I’m about eight years old in it and standing next to me is my best friend. We’re in the doorway of our old house and, behind our heavy bangs and freckles, we’re grinning from ear to ear. I can remember that picture being taken; we’d just found out that school had been canceled, torn off our itchy uniforms, and hurriedly dressed in the warmest clothes we could find. I’m wearing mismatched gloves, a shabby knit cap, and overalls. My friend has grabbed a thin coat and her sister’s rubber boots, and she’s holding two empty feed bags from her dad’s farm. We look cold and impossibly cheerful. It’s snowed heavily overnight. And we’re going plastic bag sledding.
Waking up to a world covered in snow still has that effect, more than thirty years later. The view has changed—from suburb to open fields—but the feelings are still the same. That unexpected white blanket has an extraordinary power—the quality of light, the peaceful muffling, the way snow can cloak familiar objects into new shapes and sculptures. It’s transformative.
For us, as kids, snow was synonymous with fun. Snow meant speed, exhilaration, and toppling laughter. Snow gave us the freedom to fight, slide, crash, and make a mess, without the fear of a scolding. Snow put a wrench in the works, stopped the numbing timetable of school lessons and stealing an extra day of free time. It didn’t matter if you had an expensive wooden sled or a trash bag, snow was democratic—everyone was entitled to its pleasures.
As an adult, snow can be a mixed blessing. It still has the power to stop us in our tracks with its mesmerizing beauty, but it can also mean traffic delays and the anxiety of a broken routine. Snow, when it really means business, can and has brought the country to a standstill, reminding us not to get too complacent. I like that, though—we need a poke in the ribs once in a while, just to put us in our place.
The farm where I live with my young family nestles in the bottom of a valley. Access to the house is down a narrow, steep track, about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) long. When the snow comes, it turns the road into a giant frozen slide, lethal for the farm machinery and vehicles that need to come and go. Two particularly bad consecutive winters, about ten years ago, left us marooned for weeks—the snow was so deep we had to trudge to the top of the hill and flag down passing farmers to take us into town. We soon learned our lesson, scraping together enough money to buy a secondhand 4x4 that could cope with whatever the snow threw at us.
So, for my husband, winter can mean back-breaking dawns spent shoveling, scraping, or blowing drifts to clear our only route out to civilization. And yet, he’s not averse to the lighter side of snow. A brilliant skier, for him snow represents a chance to break away from being responsible and reclaim the giddy pleasure of hurtling down a mountainside; for him, and many other people, skiing and other winter sports are about total immersion—few pastimes allow such a cocktail of personal freedom, self-expression, adrenaline, and sensational views.
We had another snowy winter this year. While we were killing time, watching the flakes tumble past the window, my youngest daughter—who’s five—asked a flurry of questions, including Where does snow came from?
and Why is snow white?
I realized I didn’t know. And so began the process of writing this book—it’s a miscellany, really, an assortment of things about snow, ice, and winter weather that you might not already know. I wanted to find out answers