There’s one skill that I haven’t mastered: the art of snowball rolling. In theory, one should be able to start with a tightly packed snowball, roll it, and wind up with a behemoth of a snow boulder. This is how snowmen are built. I have seen them with my own eyes in my own neighborhood. I recall once, on The Quad of the University of Illinois, watching some students rolling a ball along the length of The Quad during a really heavy snowfall. They rolled the biggest honkin’ snow boulder I’ve ever seen. It was crazy. I swore I’d roll one of my own some day.
Not every swear yields results, though.
My yard today is pretty heavily inclined in spots. I have enough room and enough of a hill to get a good ball rolling. I’m not talking about a little hand-packed snowball, either. I’m thinking that there’s enough room for a mid-sized snow boulder. The key word is “thinking” because I’m not “making” a mid-sized snow boulder when I’m laboring out there in the bone-chilling cold of an Illinois winter. What I’m really making in those instances is a modest snowball that leaves a trail behind it when I roll it but acquires no additional mass. I’m obviously missing something.
Snowballs are a funny thing to think about in August. Regardless, in nature, the rolling snowball scenario requires no human intervention. It just happens. I’ve not observed it myself, but it happens all the same. Often in life, there are snowballs rolling all around us. Many of them we don’t initiate. We’re not even always aware of them. But then there are the ones that we do start rolling.
In the world of metaphors, I’ve almost mastered the art of snowball rolling. At minimum, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
Illuminate Possibilities 