The second I submitted my housing application last summer, I instantly started dreading the possibility of having to live on Newton Campus. I would have had to take a bus to class each morning which was why I felt incredibly lucky when I was assigned to Welch Hall. My dorm is on College Road, a collection of three buildings separated from the rest of Upper Campus by Hammond Street. The dorms are ‘L’ shaped, creating a nice, quiet courtyard between Welch and Williams with adirondack chairs, carefully trimmed hedges, and strategically placed rocks. During the blizzard two weeks ago, my friends and I built an igloo in the inside corner of the ‘L’ right outside my first floor window. The igloo did not have a roof, but was circular with 6 foot sloping walls and an entrance facing my room. Whenever I got bored at my desk, I would lean back in my wobbly wooden chair, look out the window, and just think “Wow, I made that.” The igloo is now reduced to a sliver of its former glory, the walls only around knee-high. The adirondack chairs once hidden behind a fortress of snow now stick out as a sad reminder of what it used to be. However, the melting snow tells a story which I know only the builders can understand and appreciate. Currently sitting in an adirondack chair, I am able to identify individual chunks of snow used to construct the igloo. I see the sloping base where I piled powdery snow, trying so hard to get it to compress and stick. I see the remnants of a rectangular block of snow and I know exactly how it was formed – I filled the blue recycling bins found in every BC dorm, stomping down relentlessly until the snow was perfectly compact. My roommate came up with this method, instructing everyone to go empty their own bins and bring them out to the igloo. One chunk of snow sits in the entrance, a chunk I can easily tell was taken from the pile at the end of the path made by the snowplow. Plowed snow has a different consistency than fresh powder. The compacted mixture of melted snow from the salt on the ground creates large, solid blocks, ideal for igloo building. While it is sad my igloo has melted and is no longer the fort I dreamed of making as a child, the story told by the individual blocks of snow is a nice reminder of my favorite day at BC.
Jude's Portfolio 