Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Observations... On What the Snow Left Behind

Just before the first winter snow hits everyone rushes to clean up their yard. They go about gathering up lawn chairs, hoses, bikes, and children’s toys so that nothing will get buried beneath the snow. When the snow finally comes everything is crisp, white and clean. The landscape is pristine and perfect. There is no trash on the side of the roads, no toys scattered across the yard, and no dead withered grass or mulched leaves. Just a blanket of pure white. At least until the snow melts.

When the snow melts it leaves behind a plethora of objects. Some, like the tennis ball and the hoola hoop, are things that never got put away in the fall. Others, like the empty ice cream bucket and the variety of tin cans have accumulated over the winter. Each object provides a tiny bit of insight into how people have been spending their winter. Have they been worrying about the bike that got left in their front yard? Have they been drinking a lot of coke and eating fast food every Friday? Have they been whooping it up at a party advertised in crumpled pink flyer? Or have they been out searching for a spare tire or the mate to a missing left shoe?

Some objects are a complete mystery and reveal almost nothing about the people that left them. Is that strange looking piece of melted yellow plastic the remains of a tent stake or highway cone? Is the small white plastic hoop a washer or a ring and is it a bit of machinery or fashion? Is the small bit of twisted metal a piece of soda can or a cookie tray? Could it even possibly be the fused together links of the chain off of a chainsaw? Chances are no one will ever know for sure.

If a brief walk of fifty feet can reveal all these things imagine what you might find if you walked for two hundred feet or if you drove for several miles. There’s no telling what the snow might leave behind. From bottle caps to animal bones to unidentifiable pieces of melted plastic, the ground after the snow first melts is a virtual treasure trove (or flea market) of discoveries.

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