The article “Fun in the Snow” is from Bill Bryson’s book I’m a Stranger Here Myself. It highlights the author's attempt to enjoy all the excitement that a winter in New England has to offer and how each experience only furthers to enhance his opinion that he is not one for "traditional" winter sports.
As a child growing up in Iowa, Mr. Bryson received a pair of skis as a gift for Christmas when he was about 8 years old. After an attempt to ski down his the porch sent him skiing headlong into the back of the family’s garage, he decided maybe winter sports weren’t something he would desired to do again. Now, 35 years later and living in New England, he found himself feeling left out of as everyone around him is out and about enjoying all that a winter in New England has to offer. Deciding he didn’t want to be the only one not trying to have fun in the snow he decides to accompany his two youngest children when they go ice skating at the local skating pond. Unfortunately his legs appear to have forgotten how to navigate the ice and he spends the bulk of his time falling down before eventually limping off the ice. Next he attempts sledding, which apparently did not go much better because the author refused talk about the experience. Finally he reluctantly agrees to try snowmobiling with his friend, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, who has been after him for quite a few weeks to give it a try. After a quick briefing of how to operate the machine, the author sets off on a terrifying trip through the dense woods of New Hampshire feeling more like he’s just holding on to the snowmobile for dear life than actually controlling it. At the end of the adventure, they retire to a local pub and it is there that Mr. Bryson finally finds a “winter sport” that he can embrace as his own, winter drinking.
this is good article and intersting
ReplyDeleteAlthough Bill Bryson's purpose of writing the chapter "Fun in the Snow" was to showcase why it is that he believes he was simply not made to participate in traditional outdoor winter sports, I find that it actually highlights how the writer failed to even attempt to become proficient at anything he tried. While Mr. Bryson gives many examples of how he fails to even the basic of extracurricular winter activities (ice skating) it was his narrative on his first snowmobile trip that I really found his attitude towards winter to be not just disagreeable, but it was almost as if he had made up his mind from the get go that he simply was just not going to enjoy it. I can certainly relate to the feeling of being out of control while learning how to snowmobile because my first time driving a snowmobile was a bit scary (or tenth time for that matter), but I find it disheartening that he seemed to have given up even before he had started. It seemed that he let his fear of the machine get in the way of enjoying not only the experience of zipping through the New Hampshire woods, but also of sharing an experience with his friend. I found that his opinion about outdoor winter pursuits was very narrow-minded and while his narratives were certainly funny, his lack of effort overshadowed the comedy.
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