Snowflake Collection
A snowflake forms hundreds of metres above the ground, built around a tiny impurity, its
destiny determined by wind currents originating hundreds of kilometres away. Its brief life
usually ends compacted under the weight of its brethren or melted by the sun’s rays.
Snowflakes play a vital part in maintaining the delicate balance of Earth’s climate, reflecting
many of those destructive rays back into space. Yet this occurs less and less each year as
innumerable would-be snowflakes never form, the temperature a degree too high to grow.
There is great beauty in a snowfall, the atmosphere illuminated by dulled light barely
penetrating through rolling nimbostratus clouds. As the Earth rotates around the Sun, the
seasons change, and trees trade their coating of green for a coating of white. On a
microscopic scale, snowflakes also showcase the symmetry, the perfection of nature.
In 1885 Wilson Bentley became the first known person to photograph a snowflake. He
repeated this over 5000 times, never finding two alike. Indeed, the chance of two identical
complex snowflakes is infinitesimal — one could spend a lifetime looking without finding a
match.
If I saved one, I would save one puzzle piece of Earth’s gigantic jigsaw. If I saved many, I
would save a tapestry of Earth’s art.
It is possible to preserve a snowflake with superglue between glass slides: to keep nature’s
creation, not just a snapshot of one long gone. This does it more justice than preserving by
the simple press of a button.
A peacock displays its tail in a splendiferous fan, crested by a round, jewel-toned ocellus –
Hera’s gift. If I kept one of its feathers, it would simply be a reminder of what there is to
behold in Indonesian and Indian forests.
Humanity loves to keep records of the past, be it in artefacts, art, poetry, song, photographs,
or prose. Sadly, the past is not the present, and many beautiful natural landmarks are spoilt.
The once-mighty Colorado River now a polluted trickle entering the Pacific Ocean near the
Mexican border, a force of nature conquered by man’s dominion. Vietnam’s forests
devastated by Agent Orange. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, only a symbol of the choking
plastic pollution permeating the ocean from Mediterranean Sea to Mariana Trench. Finally,
the worst ecological disaster of them all – global heating.
Three days after welcoming in 2013, I summited Mt Kosciusko. At its peak, scattered patches
of white still clung to the slopes. My most vivid memory of the climb is poking my fingers
into that snow, picking up that final vestige of early spring falls, and watching it melt in my
hands. That summer, the Bureau of Meteorology added a new colour to take its temperature
scale to 54°C. Snow has always survived on the Australian continent until February. In the
future, will my experience simply be an unrepeatable memory?
One joule of energy heats one gram of water by one-quarter of a degree. Each hour 430
quintillion joules from the sun hits the Earth – slightly less energy than we humans use
annually. The greenhouse effect traps some of this energy, giving us an average global
temperature of 14 degrees. It sustains us, keeping Earth’s oceans liquid and life able to
prosper. This balance evolved slowly over billions of years.
Humanity destroyed this delicate balance. We set climate change into motion. We started the
melting of the snowflake.
If I walked the winding trails of Cradle Mountain, through beautiful unspoilt Tasmanian
wilderness, I would never find a thylacine. Yet if I walked into a museum, I could easily view
its ancestor’s fossil. We record nature’s fragility and wonder forever. We preserve but do not
conserve.
Technology and time advances. It’s theoretically possible to reverse all the damage of our
carelessness and hubris. Anthropogenic environmental pollution can cease. A microplasticeating bacterium could relieve the ocean of its burden. The dioxins will slowly leave
Vietnam’s soil, allowing reforestation. Desalination plants may reduce agricultural reliance
on the mighty Colorado, and the trickle could again become a raging torrent. We can restore
to glory what once was and behold the peacock’s tail once more.
Global heating is different.
The average human lifespan is 79 years. While most ecological damage is reversible in a
fraction of this time, the temperature rise may be locked in for much longer. The atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide in Hawaii was 417 ppm in May 2020, rising three ppm since
May 2019. A one-degree global change in temperature. It will take coordination on a global
scale, a transformation of modern lifestyles, and technological progress to change this
trajectory.
Built by nature in the towering clouds, tossed around carelessly by the wind, an endless
supply of tiny art pieces drift down. Will they reach the ground, or will they return to the
atmosphere, never to be witnessed?
Reflection Statement for Snowflake Collection
My discursive piece, ‘Snowflake Collection’ explores how anthropogenic environmental
destruction can ruin human experiences, specifically focusing on climate change. I drew
inspiration from Kim Cheng Boey’s poem ‘Stamp Collecting’, which depicts the stamp
collection as a preservation of the poet’s past. This led me to the idea of preserving history,
specifically focusing on humanity’s eagerness to preserve nature while contrasting its failure
to conserve it.
My choice of first-person voice gave the ideas expressed a human, individual dimension.
This choice enabled me to convey the wonder of the natural world and the frustration of its
destruction. Through this effect, I wanted the reader to reflect on their personal experiences
of the natural world. The open-ended problem-solution structure used helped me to express
my idea in the discursive style. Just as Boey’s humble stamp symbolises a more extraordinary
concept, I chose the snowflake to symbolise both the beauty and fragility of unspoilt natural
environments. It played into the idea of global heating: literally melting away.
To evoke the wonder and beauty of nature — which I felt was critical for the piece — I used
a combination of visual imagery and scientific information. This was also helpful to explore
the science of global heating. I used varied paragraph lengths to emphasise critical points and
assist the piece’s flow.
I quickly found the snowflake metaphor for the core of my piece but experimented with
several frameworks before choosing climate change. This meant that I shifted my structure
from a narrative to a discursive piece, which highlighted climate change’s significance. To
address the stimulus I incorporated a personal anecdote – a localised example of universal
human experiences explored throughout the piece. This change enabled me to express the
frustration of this universal loss to humanity more meaningfully through my local experience
of the beauty of nature.