Feather Plume (Window Ice) - CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image

When Wilson Bentley posited that no two snowflakes are alike, he couldn’t possibly have imagined that the concept would be twisted, a century later, to characterize the modern-day cultural phenomenon of attention-seeking poseurs and self-entitled narcissists.

"You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake."

Bentley’s work reminds me, in a way, of the photographic series by one of my favorite artists, Robert McGowan. Although Bentley was more singlemindedly focused in his documentation of snowflakes, both men possessed a rare talent for discovering unexpected forms of beauty in unlikely places, where no other had thought to look. Both also elegantly described their experiences of nature in their writings. Bentley expressed his thoughts on uniqueness and evanescence with particular wistfulness:

• "Every snowflake has an infinite beauty which is enhanced by knowledge that the investigator will, in all probability, never find another exactly like it."
• “When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”
• “A form just like this one may never be isolated again. The concern, amounting to intense desire. Solicitude. To perpetuate each masterpiece, the image of each rare gem in the photograph, before its matchless beauty is forever lost […].”

A variation on a snowclone: I am Jack’s window tracery frost.

This morning I saw the first flurry of approaching winter. Rather than lament how bitterly cold it feels, I want to remember to behold and treasure the extraordinary everyday beauty of the changing seasons. No, you and I are not special snowflakes; we’re not even frost. In the end we won’t be hand in hand, with our feet on the air and our heads on the ground, watching it all fall down. Each leaf, each snowflake, each moment fragile and fleeting. Nothing can bring back the hour. Gather ye rosebuds….

"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

I want to see the world the way Bentley saw it, with awe and wonder, as if through the eyes of a child. (Look past the feathery plumes--there, in the upper right corner, what do you see? I see the head of a dragon in profile: eye, nose, mouth, ear or maybe a horn.) To lose the ability to dream, it seems to me at this moment, would be one of the saddest things in the world.

Image credit: Special Collections, Rebecca Crown Library, Dominican University.

Written by Ellen K. Corrigan, Assistant Professor, Cataloging Services, Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University

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