How Snow Affects My Brain

Not sure if we were supposed to write about weather in general or a specific one, so I wrote the one I was most obsessive about.

For me, the purpose of a building transforms depending on the weather outside. This is most apparent to me when it snows.

When the white stuff starts falling, the building I am in suddenly turns into a warm shelter. The essence of being inside is “warmth, safety, and protection” rather than “a prison in which classes occur.”

If I am in a building away from home when it begins to snow, that building becomes a checkpoint in a journey across a snowy landscape. Suddenly my day becomes an adventure and my goal is to go from shelter to shelter until I reach home, where I can take a warm bath or shower and enjoy the fact that indoor heating exists. If I am at home when the snowing begins, I am at the start of a journey and I need to go out and experience the snow and travel to another place in which I can observe the snow. This adventuring-mindset has been present in me ever since I was a child.

Snowy days are most perfect during school, where I wake up in the morning to go to class, discover it’s snowing outside, then go on an adventure to the classroom. I greatly enjoy being both in and out of the snow. Experience and observation are equally wonderful when it’s snowing. I am at peace with the world if I am in a place where I can simply watch the snow come down or go out and have a snowball fight-which includes anywhere except rooms with no windows.

Therefore, when it snows, I get overexcited and extremely hyper because I want to take in all of the snow at once before it disappears. To avoid taking my enthusiasm too far (i.e., running around in circles and randomly yelling about snow), I must internalize all of my excitement about the weather conditions. This internalization superheats my body and I am able to go out into the snow without any form of coat- just a hat and a scarf.

If it rarely snows during a winter, the few days where snow occurs become points of extreme hyperactivity. If it snows a lot, I get a bit desensitized and am able to take the snow in more peacefully instead of feeling like I have to suck every second of enjoyment possible out of one snow day. Therefore, if yetis and abominable snowmen ever overtake the world, I won’t mind too much. That is all I have to say.