This is the story of the first snow.
Last week, it snowed for the first time this year. It was amazing. I love snow. I love winter. I love Christmas. I started listening to Christmas music the second that I saw the first flake. Since then, I have lost seven friends on Facebook.
I spent last winter in New Zealand. It was summer there. Upper 70s. No precipitation. Gorgeous beaches. Summer is hot. I don't really like it that much.
They don't believe in ice or air conditioning in New Zealand. If you ask for an iced coffee, you are forcibly removed from the cafe. There is not a single air-conditioned building in Auckland. Apparently, there is air conditioning at the U.S. embassy in Wellington. I love America.
I did not see snow until March, when I got back to Chicago. Even then, my friends and I had to wander around a forest preserve to find a decent snowdrift. It wasn't the nice, soft, clean snow that you can actually do things with. It was just icy corn. One of my friends hit me in the face with an ice ball. My lip started bleeding. It was awesome.
The snowball fight is probably my favorite Dartmouth tradition. This year, some friends and I headed for the Green at midnight exactly. Hundreds of kids were already there. It was chaotic. It always looks like how I imagine a mosh pit at the North Pole would be.
In the thick of it, nobody was really that aggressive. Everyone was just talking, making token tosses. Scuffles ebbed and flowed among friends. The atmosphere was intoxicating, like a beer or a dream.
Snow is odd. It makes everything sparkle a bit more. Going outside feels romantic and memorable. It's kinda like you're seeing everything through that soft-focus sepia lens that they use in really sappy movies or really artsy porn. It's great.
I was talking to this girl during a lull in the snowball fight. She said that she couldn't wait to go abroad for winter. I told her that she was dumb.
Winter gets a really bad rap here. Last winter was really bad. I know because while I was sitting on the beach in New Zealand, people were posting things like "I haven't been outside in a week. brrrr xD" and "Derrick Rose is the Truth."
But there are so many things you get to do here in winter that you can't do anytime else. Occom Pond. Occom Pong. Skiway. Sledding. Terrible sweaters. Polar bear swim. These are fun things. It's like Six Flags, but you have to wear a North Face and the food is more expensive.
Last year, someone in my house decided that it would be fun to play Santa at the end of Fall term. Every morning, muffins appeared in the brothers' rooms, usually with a dumb, sappy note. One guy got a pie.
When I got back from winter break my sophomore year, I had an envelope holding several thousand dollars in my jacket pocket. I needed it to pay some absurd bill from the College.
The envelope fell out of my pocket when I was getting my luggage from underneath the Dartmouth Coach. As I was walking away, I realized that I didn't have the envelope anymore. I whipped around, and a kid in a Dartmouth sweater was standing right in front of me with the envelope in hand.
"You probably don't want to lose this," he said, smiling. I said thanks. He said no worries. I don't think I've seen that guy since.
Campus looks different in winter. People look different too. Most of them are wearing parkas.
Dartmouth acts different in winter. It's closer and relaxed. People act different too.
