Intriguingly, freshly fallen snow can actually store sounds as well as project them with clarity.  A carefully gathered snowball is like a library of sounds stored on crystalline shelves.  When held to the ear like a seashell, it may whisper the secrets it has absorbed.  Ergo, composer and music theorist John Rahn describes "a little snowball of sounds” (Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics, 1995).  Snow expert Nancy Armstrong explains that "When snow is newly fallen, sound waves are absorbed into its soft surface.  Later, when the surface has hardened, sounds may travel further and sound clearer, because the snow reflects sound waves, sending them more quickly through the air” (Snowman in a Box, 2002).  Barbara Blair concurs: "snow is a wonderful substance to enhance awareness” (Communing with the Infinite, 2006).  [The preceding is an excerpt from our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound.]