Last week we had an arctic freeze in south Texas, replete with snow and ice hanging from the eaves. The snow gathered on the ground and decorated the trees. Traffic was nil. It’s not like it never snows in San Antonio but it’s rare and usually doesn’t last. This time it lasted for several days, melted and then snowed again. It was freezing cold but so beautiful. I remembered my childhood in the winter wonderland of Michigan.
So I went next door with a snowball for my neighbor’s daughter and enlisted her to play in the snow. Well actually I rang the doorbell to present her with the snowball and then she came up with the brilliant idea: let’s make a snowman!
Once we had built the snowman and found a costume for it and had taken it’s picture, we were ready for more adventures. We found cardboard (the closest thing we could find for a sled) and went out searching for a hill to slide down. On the way we made snow angels and caught snowflakes on our tongue.
We found a hill, well not much of a hill, but we slid and felt the thrill.
By this time ice was clinging to her pant cuffs and my ears were starting to freeze so we headed home. Along the way, snowflakes still falling from the sky, I tried to capture one so I could see it’s design.
It wasn’t really possible, they were all tangled up together and melted on contact with my gloves. But I really wanted to, so when I got home I found my Snowflake book and started perusing the pictures.
It turns out snowflakes are not frozen water at all, they’re frozen water vapor. But why does the frozen water vapor condense into hexagonal shapes as it falls through the atmosphere, wrapped around a tiny piece of dust?
The science of it informs us that the molecular structure of H2O creates the hexagonal structure we see as snowflakes. Not to fault the scientists but I believe the structure of snowflakes is due to some form of natural aesthetics.
How water molecules align with each other to form ice crystals and ultimately become snowflakes is molecular science, but how they design and build such beautiful shapes with facets and dendrites is still a mystery.
To quote 19th century scientist, Jules Henri Poincare, “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful, he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.”
Is building a snowflake an artistic expression? Is this God? That question opens an endless box of Pandora’s boxes.
And why are all snowflakes different? Actually if you think of it, everything is different, every bacterium is different from every other bacterium and the fish in the sea is different from every other fish in the sea. Diversity is the commonality of life.
And so are the stars, so are the galaxies. Nothing is the same as another except for on the atomic level. One quark is the same as another quark. But is it really? Maybe we just haven’t explored deep enough to see the unique characteristics of each individual quark.
What is the commonality then? On no, here we are back to God. Could we say that the fundamental commonality is God? And everything else is permutations, variations on a theme?
Whew. That’s deep. In one heavy snowfall on one day in one very average front yard, there are millions of snowflakes falling every minute (just an estimate). Maybe God delegates the snowflake construction and design to the angels. Maybe they assemble each snowflake as it falls. It can take hours for a snowflake to fall depending on how high up it is when it forms and where the winds blow it.
I think I’ll go with the angel hypothesis. It’s not scientific but it feels good.
Thanks , Rohn !