Holly Kays photo
War and Peace on the Parkway
Even a light covering of snow can make a landscape magical.
When I’m out enjoying snowy vistas on the Blue Ridge Parkway, it’s usually with a pair of skis attached to my feet. I glide through the crystallized water, I breathe deeply, and I drink in the views and the silence.
Today, however, I was accompanied not by skis and silence but by a bubbly 12-year-old who had not yet seen snow that winter. My plan for our afternoon in the mountains had mainly involved walking up the closed road, which here at the gap was nearly clean of snow, and seeing how deep it might get before the time came to descend the mountain.
But Emily, the 12-year-old, had other plans, or at least other inclinations. We hadn’t walked far before she went running off the road, into the snow-covered woods, declaring marshal law. It was time for a snowball fight, she informed me, showing me to my battle station. Soon would begin a segment of time (ending when Emily said so) during which we would each add as many snowballs as possible to our respective arsenals. Then, war.
As I grabbed handfuls of snow, packing them into balls and depositing them into my newly established armory, I tried to remember the last time I’d been in a snowball fight. There was that one time in college that my dorm declared a formal fight with another residence hall, but somehow the fun police got a heads-up on the plans, and the fight never happened. I’d thrown plenty of snowballs at my sisters over the years, though nothing organized and declared—just random acts of guerilla warfare with no clear resolution. Even that was years in the rearview. It had been a long time since they’d been in range while snow lay on the ground.
My attempts at reminiscing had to wait, however, because Emily had announced that the arms race was over.
“Ready, set, go!” she said, gathering her arms full of snowballs as she spoke.
She looked like she meant business, and I decided to play defense, mostly dodging her attacks until her hands were empty and she had to stoop down for a refill. When that happened, I was ready, painting the back of her brown coat with exploded white powder as she shrieked in protest.
Eventually, we were both out of snowballs, and though one of us certainly had more snowball remnants plastered on our clothing than the other, Emily declared the fight to have been a draw. We shook on it, and the landscape shifted from desperate battle scene back to picturesque wonderland.
Holly Kays photo
War and Peace on the Parkway
Emily poses with her recently rehabilitated snowman.
With peacetime now established, the next phase of our adventure proved to be of a domestic nature. After walking approximately 10 yards further up the road, Emily left it again to wade into a snowdrift surrounding a fallen log. The perfect place to build a family, she said—a family of snowmen, anyway. Before long, six mini snowmen, along with their lazily napping dog Frederick, perched on the log. Swirls of moss made hair, beards and mustaches, with one clutching a “skateboard” and another sporting a Mohawk, both created using strategically placed wood chips.
Finally satisfied, Emily introduced the snowmen to me, one by one—Billy with the giant mustache, Karen who “looks like she wants to speak to the manager,” and so on—and we returned to the road.
But we didn’t walk for long—fighting a war and creating an entire family from scratch takes both time and energy, as it turns out, and soon we had to turn around. We paused to check in on the snow family one last time, descending the steep road much more quickly than we’d managed to climb it the first time around. Soon the winter wonderland began its retreat, the meadow where we’d parked the car marked only by receding patches of wet snow. Back in colder times, somebody had built a life-size snowman beside the Blue Ridge Parkway sign, but the day’s bright sunshine had taken its toll. His head was drooping, perched on an ever-narrowing pedestal of snow intended as a neck. With his mouth, nose and eyes melted away, his face was now a blank, haunting slate.
“Come help,” said Emily, pointing at the snowman. Between us, we managed to find enough snow to fill in the gaps below his head, and enough sticks and acorns to replace his missing facial features. Because of us, the snowman would live to see another day.
I visit this stretch of the Parkway quite often, but somehow I’d never known it was home to a snowman hospital. But then, I’d also been ignorant to its use as a battleground and snowfamily factory. Some things you just learn as you go.