Sentence:  But he was looking forward to snow - seeing for himself that each tiny crystal of the <WSD>water</WSD> of life was a unique individual , as he had read - walking barefoot , rolling in it . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  binary compound that occurs at room temperature as a clear colorless odorless tasteless liquid; freezes into ice below 0 degrees centigrade and boils above 100 degrees centigrade; widely used as a solvent