Snow Day
I didn’t expect many people to be outside. But actually, there were quite a lot.
Sunday January 25. Brooklyn, NY. I wake up and go for my morning walk. I was planning to stay inside for the whole day, but as I stepped out into snow, I knew I had to make a longer trip out to play. To me, snow is magical. Honestly, any form of precipitation is magical. It is literally water falling out of the sky. And you can’t stop it. In an era where so much of nature’s forces can be easily overcome—darkness gone by lamp, heat gone by A/C—rain and snow being such a powerful force on people’s behavior is incredible. Also I just think snow is really cool, and part of that I assume must be from growing up in California.
2:30pm. I walk out decked out in layers. Underneath my winter coat, I wear a thin down jacket. I wear a pair of sweatpants under my jeans. Hiking boots, gloves, and a beanie. Inspired, my housemate K joins me.
My plan was to walk to the park and experience the bliss of nobody in the park, and the snow softly falling. It’s about a 30 minute walk from where I live to Prospect Park, although in the snow, it definitely took longer.
People walked in the middle of the street. I truly get so much joy from watching people walk in the middle of the street. This is because I do not like cars. Cars—more than I thought—were out on the road, slowly driving through the snow and slush. You could see them from far away and take your time getting out of the way. Children played in front lawns. Winter dogs were out in full force. Huskies and Samoyeds abounded, completely in their element.
There were more people at the park than I thought, all walking on the road. There were even a few runners wearing sneakers and shorts. The lake was frozen. The ducks all huddled together in the non-frozen patches of the lake, still continuing their routine of dipping their heads into the water looking for food. It did occur to me that maybe we could walk across the ice, but I thought it too risky.
And that’s when I saw several people walking across the lake. Despite the ice ladders with the signs “Danger: Thin Ice”, we walked out onto the frozen lake following the footprints of others and crossed to the other side. K decided to fall backwards into the snow on top of the lake. They found it very comfy.
There was a river I wanted to cross that had no footprints, and I took a few steps, only to find that it was slush. If I walked any further, I would’ve fell in.
By the Camperdown Elm, children sledded. If there were that many kids sledding, I thought there must be many more by the Great Field in the north where there were much steeper hills. And I was right. We came upon a huge crowd of people sledding, skiing, and snowboarding. People without sleds brought up baking trays, folded up U-Haul boxes, stuffed trash bags, and one guy just straight-up used an Amazon box. Some kids erected snow mounds to do tricks off of. I watched a guy wipe out in the sickest way ever by snowboarding off a tree trunk. Everyone cheered.
Snow was magical enough for me, but what was even more magical was seeing everyone come together and have fun despite literal freezing rain pelting us, not to mention it was below freezing and taking off your glove even for a few seconds was met with stinging pain.
When K ploofed into the snow, they got snow in their gloves that made the inside completely wet. Their hands were freezing, so I let them have my pair. I shoved my gloves into my pockets. I thought I would be fine with that, but that’s when we found the sled. A red sled rested on a lone trash can. We took it up to the hill. We quickly learned that although it looked mostly intact, there was a crack in the middle. We could barely get down the hill before snow got inside. I fell off and snow got all over my hands. It was freezing. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I discovered that they were filled with snow. I took my beanie off and alternated warming each of my hands in it.
The sun was going down and we decided to head to the northern tip to head back home on the subway. All across the field, people lined up at the top of the hills to sled. Before we got out of the park, I noticed a light. It was fire. Someone brought a standing pit and made a roaring fire. People from all over approached the fire. K and I knew we had to go. We walked up and everyone welcomed us in.
The fire was made by a couple of Gen Z bros who came down from Astor Place. K and I warmed our hands by the fire. My hair and beanie were frozen. My feet were freezing. The Gen Z bros crushed cans from a six-pack of beer and shot the shit. One mentioned he wasn’t on social media since it’s brainrot. Two of them argued about what music to put on, one advocated passionately for Phillip Glass for the ambience, and one bro said, This feels like a Red Dead cutscene.
They even let people use their sleds. I asked K if they wanted to come with me, but they decided to stay by the fire. The fire was so cozy. I walked up the hill and joined the people waiting to sled down. When I got up there, there was a girl sitting on a sled who was too scared to go down. She kept saying, What if I fall off? What if I fall off? Everyone tried telling her that it would be fine. One of the people cheering her on—her friend possibly, but I couldn’t tell who was in which group, we all melded together in one giant community dedicated to sledding—asked if he could start gently pushing her. She said, I guess it’s happening. And very slowly she went down, and then caught some more speed, and then sledded down the hill! I used another sled and went down. At the bottom, I asked her how it went. She said, That was so fun.
It felt good to go back up the hill and tell the guy that she had a lot of fun. Thanks so much! I really appreciate this! he said. I tried telling him that the sleds weren’t mine, but he said, Oh I mean thank you for just being there.
That’s what was so magical about that day in the park. Everyone was just there. The snow brought us together. It definitely brought a certain kind of people together. Although it was more people than I thought, the majority of people, if they could, stayed inside. It takes a little amount of crazy to stay out for hours in a snowstorm.