Philosophy: footprints in the snow

Self-tutoring about winter life: the tutor reflects.

Today I walked somewhere through a couple of snowy fields. An hour and a half later, returning, it occurred to me to looks for my prints I’d made earlier, going.

Casually looking for them, a feeling came that they wouldn’t be easy to find. I could tell that the sentiment came from recollection rather than speculation: I’d try to do this before, and it wasn’t easy.

Indeed, I came to recall numerous times when, as kids, my friends and I tried to retrace our footsteps, made in snow, but had lots of trouble finding them. When we finally did, they didn’t look like we remembered, or else weren’t where we recalled. The situation, we agreed, was mysterious. Over again, it happened.

People’s memories are notoriously unreliable, but I also suspect that footprints change after they’re made. Someone might say that’s obvious, because snow melts. However, many of the cases I recall, the temperature hadn’t risen to melting since the footprints were made. Yet I believe even then, the footprints may change somehow, so they become much harder to recognize.