Snow Paths

After years of living in the city, I forgot the feeling of walking down a winding trail. It reminds me of hiking in the forest or strolling through a field. The snow beneath my feet has a more spongy vibration than pavement. The expansive white coat (which doesn’t last for long) lightens the shadows and quiets the hum. Every sense is affected. It is sort of like nature’s white padded room–within which we’re forced to endure tranquility and discomfort simultaneously.

The pleasantness may have something to do with our amygdala gland, located in the temporal lobe and connected with processing emotion and memory. In 2007, a study published in Neuropsychologia linked the amygdala gland, specifically fear, with angular forms. Ingrid Fetell, a designer in New York, explores how modern design and its aesthetic of clean, sharp lines might be impacting us at an unconscious emotional level. Is it possible that while the city is stripped of its straight lines we are more at ease? That our sensorial reaction to the snow impacts our unconscious physiological impression?

Perhaps this is hard to imagine when it is minus twenty outside and you’re walking behind someone who’s going too slow because, in addition to being curvy, the paths are also narrower which make difficult to pass. Winter is challenging for many reasons, but regardless I always get a little giddy and awestruck when the city’s designated sidewalks are transformed into deep curvy snow paths.