Children of the Snow

When you fly into Twin Cities International from points south and east, if the wind is right the landing pattern will take you over a certain tiny village. If there has been a recent snowfall, if the weather is fair, and if it is daylight, you might see a field with figures drawn in the snow.

At first you will doubt your eyesight. But the pilot's voice will come over the speakers and tell you to look off towards the right or the left, to view the work of the children of Harding Creek. Then you will see flowers, faces, trees, and animals, in detail that transcends reality. You will see gray lines on white, more striking than any image you ever thought possible.

"She came in 1959," the pilot will say, "and the kids have drawn these faces, these animals, these trees and flowers ever since. Whenever there is a fresh snow, the children at Harding Creek School create them, without knowing how or why." All the pilots who fly these airways know the story of Miss Bonnie. And I know too.

The town of Harding Creek has always had only one school, a converted chapel. When I was growing up there, students from first through eighth grades all sat under its roof for seven hours a day, from Labor Day till Memorial Day. Despite the span of years from youngest to oldest students, the school was never full. Harding Creek was too small a town even to be recognized on state maps.

During the first decade of my life, there were few joys that could compare with that of shedding layers of clothing and running barelegged and barefoot through summer grass. I would swim in the pond every day until my fingers and toes got shriveled up. My mother would point at them and laugh, "You've grown old!" My nose would get freckled and my hair would grow blond, and my aunt Josie would tease me, "The ladies will swoon over you someday!" Then there would come a day when the sun would fail to climb high, the clouds would rush in, the long pants and long-sleeved shirts would come out of the closet, and the wind would sigh, "The fun is over."

Fourth grade was different. I did not mind the end of the summer of '59. During that fall and early winter with the new teacher, Miss Bonnie, school was fun. I recall her countenance as if I last saw her yesterday. No switch-bearing, bespectacled schoolmarm was this! With cherry lips, peach skin, chocolate eyes, and licorice hair that played games with the sun, she at once became a second mother, as much for the fourteen-year-olds as for those just starting the adventure of school.

I recall the hard pews that had been converted into long desks, and the English hardwood on the walls, and the oaken beams that clasped the roof over our heads. "My name is Bonnie," she said. "Hello, Bonnie," we answered in unison, and then we looked at one another in astonishment. Our previous teacher, Miss Donaldson, had never in years led a class the way Miss Bonnie commanded us in seconds. From the start, Miss Bonnie was master. But we never felt like servants.

Back then, learning was by rote. We memorized multiplication tables up to the twelve-by-twelve in third grade, and to twenty-by-twenty in the fourth grade. In history, names and dates were taught to us; but there were human beings behind the names, and generations living through the dates. Miss Bonnnie made us imagine that we lived in other places and other times. She taught the youngest of us to read at the same time the oldest of us learned geometry and algebra. When we were good at morning class, she let us go outside to play. This continued through September, and as the leaves turned color in October. We frolicked in cold weather and hot, under clouds and sun, in grass and frost. When winter came, we played in the snow.

That year, it snowed early in November. Miss Bonnie sent us out into a field of grass, with only the tips of the still-green blades sticking up out of the whiteness. The air smelled like a clean deep freeze. The grass was soft, the ground not yet frozen. A few stray flakes stung our tongues tastelessly, as we shuffled our feet around and around in the vast, flat field under the smooth, iron-gray sky. "A snow sky," Miss Bonnie said. She let us stay out for a whole hour, because it wasn't that cold, and because we had done our lessons well. We played until our noses were red.

That evening the newscasts told of strange drawings in the snow south of Minneapolis. They had been seen by airline pilots and passengers. "I wonder who could have drawn them?" my mother asked, as we ate pork chops and green peas and fried potatoes, and had steaming biscuits that melted the butter the instant it touched them. "Some farmer, probably; some bored prankster," said my dad. The television chattered from the living room, its screen invisible while we ate. "One copilot compared these drawings with etchings found in the South American desert. Anyone with any information, or who might have gotten photographs of them, please contact the office of --"

"Please shut that idiot box off," my dad said. My younger sister Jo scampered into the living room and killed the tube, and we finished our supper in silence.

The next morning a heavy snow had covered everything, but school stayed open, because the town was so small that most of the students could walk to school. After our morning lessons, Miss Bonnie said, "You've all been so good. Would you like to go out and play for a whole hour again?" Of course, we all said "Yes!" So we romped in the flat field, the brilliant sun nearly blinding us as it reflected from the whiteness. We scuffed along and Miss Bonnie led us in songs: Thanksgiving songs, winter songs, songs about candy canes. Steam rose from our faces in wisps, ascending straight up into the windless sky. Two or three small airplanes flew overhead and circled us as we played. We were happy because we had a whole hour to play and it was Friday. We waved up at the planes.

That evening there were photographs on the newscasts, pictures of a cow and a daisy and a bearded man. They had been etched in gray on white, in a field in the town of Harding Creek -- our town. My parents never said a word about it all weekend, but they kept looking at me sidelong when they thought I would not notice.

When school opened the next Monday, no one was there to teach the class. Miss Bonnie left a letter on her desk. One of the older kids read it to us.

Dear Children,

You've been a good class. I'm going to miss you. I'm going away. I can't tell you where, or why. People will come and ask questions about me. Don't be afraid. You haven't done anything wrong. Tell the people, "Miss Bonnie wanted to be an artist and a mother, but she could not draw, and she could not have a baby." Then they will stop asking questions.

Go out and play whenever it has snowed. Play as you did when I was there. Please do this for me. Someday you'll understand. Goodbye and God bless.

-- Miss Bonnie

We got a new teacher Tuesday. We hated him. We felt as if he had driven Miss Bonnie away. But we got used to him; he was nice, even though he bored us.

People did come asking questions, and we told them what Miss Bonnie had said in her letter. It didn't take the people very long to figure out that we were making the pictures in the snow as we played. And we kept on drawing them, without knowing how or why, whenever we shuffled in the new-fallen snow on that flat field, singing songs about snow and winter and fireplaces. And we always thought about a certain woman with brown eyes who, for two months, had been our second mother.

It has been many years since that snowy autumn. The school is for handicapped children now, and is supported by charity. Kids still play in the field, and their art still appears after every new snow. The ones who can walk pull the sleds of the ones who cannot. The sled tracks make today's snow art even more intricate than that of my time. Every year, after the first snow, when their drawings adorn that field, I come to the school and tell the class the story of Miss Bonnie. This could give rise to all kinds of questions! But the class always asks, in unison, only this: "When is she coming back?"

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Francisco Carrera.