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All I Have To Do is Dream (a winter wonderland)
In the Pacific Northwest is Vancouver BC where we are known for our mild weather, and we don’t typically get a lot of snow, but when we get a little bit, we really make good use of the little snow. Earlier this week we had 2 or 3 cm of snow that paralyzed the entire city, and the evening rush hour commuters got stranded for 8 hours, some not getting home until 4 AM. Made it on the national news.
Luckily I was on vacation and enjoyed the snow with a long walk in the winter wonderland watching the flakes taking in the first snow fall of the winter. I kept thinking of this beautiful video of Mona and Lisa in a Winter Wonderland in Austria, and those beautiful harmonies.
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3 Replies
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Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a little boy in a place where people spent a large part of their lives underground. They dug long shafts and tunnels into the depths of the earth to find treasures. Oh no, they were not dwarves, they were too big for that. They didn’t have red pointed caps on their heads either, but miner’s lamps, so that they could see something in the darkness of their shafts. And they didn’t find diamonds or gold, but black stones that burned when you lit them. They called it “Grubengold,” which means something like gold from the depths. When they came out of their underground mines, their faces were black and their bodies sweaty, because where they worked it was very warm and also very dirty. The people began to process the treasures they had found. To do this, they built large furnaces, with long chimneys that soon shot out of the ground everywhere. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the chimneys when the ores from the earth were processed into metals. And soon the houses of these people were also as black and dirty as their faces. Someday small mounds grew out of the ground like mushrooms, because the people collected the burnt out ore there and soon these hills grew higher and higher and the whole land froze in blackness.
But Mother Earth was kind to them. She emptied her green cornucopia over this land and soon green grass grew on the black hills, trees stretched their crowns to the gray sky and the birds and small animals also returned. But that’s not all: a small miracle always happened at Christmas time. When it started snowing overnight, this barren landscape turned into a white winter wonderland. And the little boy with whom this story began got his sled out of the basement, because right in front of his parents’ house was one of those mounds and it was the greatest toboggan run in the world. A small path snaked up to the top of the hill. The soft, fresh snow crunched beautifully under the soles of his shoes. The branches of the trees bent low under the white burden and his breath condensed into small clouds that accompanied him part of the way. Once at the top, the little boy had a fantastic view of his own, very special winter wonderland. The once gray and dark landscape was covered with the white cloth of winter. From up there the blast furnaces and their chimneys looked like small steam engines and the trains loaded with iron ore reminded him of his toy train that was already waiting for him under the Christmas tree. And then the boy went down with his sled, in a wild ride over the snow-covered slope. Trees whizzed past left and right and the path seemed to wind endlessly through the wintry landscape until he reached the bottom and quickly climbed back up the hill to enjoy the magic of winter once more.
On full moon nights, when the snow shimmered particularly mysteriously, the boy could see the molten iron being drained from the blast furnaces and the sky glowing in a deep red whole. “The Christ Child is baking cookies again,” his mother used to say and laughed lovingly. That little boy, that was me. I no longer have the sled, but I have many fond memories of the Christmas season from back then.
Even if memory often plays tricks on us, the idea of how something could have been is sometimes even more beautiful than reality itself can offer.
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Hi Jurgen,
Thanks so much for sharing your childhood experience in your winter wonderland and sled, it sounded magical. Did you say you are a writer of novels? 🙂 That was an amazing and enjoyable read of your city and the mining industry that is there and the feelings of the place you conveyed.
In the northern parts of the huge province of British Columbia I live, there are lots of mines and small quaint mining towns with a handful of very interesting little shops, museums, and neighbourhood restaurants and people are generally very welcoming.
In the place I grew up in the city when I was little there was a big hill at the school between the upper and lower playground, that felt like the side of a mountain at that age. When it snowed kids came out with their sleds and toboggans and the first snow fall, all I had was a cooking pan that I got from my mother to slide down the snow on, that’s how small I was, and then later got a “magic carpet” for the snow.
Thanks for sharing those old photos of when you were little! It looks like you had some magical times in the snow with your sled.
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Thank you Jung for liking my little childhood story. But you also seem to have many fond memories of that time, and the small coal mining towns in the northern parts of of British Columbia sound romantic. Yeah, sometimes quite strange tools were used for sledging. Cooking pot and carpet are the more ordinary things. We ran a show on TV for a short time in which the moderator raced through an ice canal while sitting in a wok. You can do it if you want a lot of attention, but you don’t have to. I definitely prefer such a romantic horse-drawn sleigh ride through the winter landscape (I’ve never done it, but I’d love to try it):
PS: Regarding the video: No, I am not sponsored by the Austrian tourist industry…😀
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