Here we are, hunkered down again. Not much else you can do in the face of significant snow. There’s only about three inches on the ground now, but they say the heavy stuff will come in after midnight.
This morning I got up early and worked outside, trying to smooth the driveway enough to park the new car next to the house, the way normal people do. I did a pretty good job filling in the hastily-dug drainage ditches with stones and raking dirt over them. The driveway itself was still mostly frozen hard, but I found dry dirt underneath the sagebrushes and shoveled it into the holes. The sun was shining brightly, and I loved it on my face. According to the thermometer on the elm tree, the temperature was only 25, but I thought it felt like spring.
Around 10:00 a.m. the clouds moved in. The sun went away, and with it my short preview of the coming season. The wind picked up. I decided I’d hacked at the frozen clumps of clay long enough and retreated to the house. Before I’d taken off my jacket, something told me to go back outside and look at the chimney before the weather got any worse. Sure enough, it was a mess. I used the knock-it-out-with-a-stick method and recovered a bucketful of soot from inside the wood stove, then called it a morning. About the time I finished, it started to snow.
I’m not quite sure what went down in the afternoon. The snow fell intermittently, then settled in for good. I didn’t want to do anything, but I had to chop up a wheelbarrow load of kindling for my wife’s studio, and I remember doing that. I talked to a client on the phone, too. No work, though. I simply had no will.
The snow, you see. It’s just been cold too long, and we’ve had plenty of the white stuff. While I was chopping wood, I noticed an old snowdrift in the shade of a big piñon. The bottom of the drift was solid ice and the top was covered with blown red dust. It was also about knee-deep, and the first big snow we had last year was on October 21. Some of that snow has been lying there for almost five months! No wonder I’m losing my mind.
No, that’s not quite right. I’m not going insane, I’m just in shock. Like tonight: I don’t want to read or work. I don’t want to write this post. I just want everything to STOP, especially the winter and the snow. I don’t want to hunker down, but hunker down we must. I’d rather jump in the new car and head south, but of course we can’t. Not tonight, anyway.
UPDATE, 12:18 a.m. MST: Oh God. I just went outside to get some firewood, and there’s almost a foot of fresh powder on the ground now. It’s also snowing heavily, no wind, just coming straight down. . Mark my words, people are going to snap tomorrow. A year ago it was 62 degrees today, the year before, 67. Tomorrow it’ll be 30, if that, and then down to single digits overnight.
And the road had just dried out…
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Just the facts, ma’am….
John, I’m sure it feels like you’ve been snowed in for 5 months, but I just did a scan back through fotofeed and found a gripe on 11/15 that it was 61 degrees. One from 11/13 shows folks in short sleeves exercising their right to bare arms. And the Ski Valley had to postpone it’s opening because it was too warm to MAKE snow.
So, brutal, yes… frigid, yes… all that. But it started with unseasonable warmth….
Sorry to be such a stickler for facts. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of them in Washington.
I defend John’s right to gripe, cuss, complain, wail and lament the various and sundry horrors of life, no matter how flawed, unreasonable, inaccurate, quixotic and in every way over-the-top (of course, I’m only speaking of his weather reports!) he from time to time is. Dante Alighieri was a bit that way too. We forgive all wordsmiths their penchant for self-dramatization.
Well, John, I’ll bet there have been days since November when you’ve worn shorts in Austin, and I KNOW it hasn’t snowed.
The fact remains that there have now been six months in a row with significant snow in them, and until last week, our house had been surrounded by a contiguous blanket of up to knee-deep snow for at least four months.
Not as bad as some places in New England, but long enough to pose serious physical and psychological challenges.
“No me recuerdo de lo que pasó,
No me di cuenta ni quién me pegó,
Todo da vueltas como un carrusel,
Locura recorre todita mi piel.
Dime todo lo que pasó,
No me di cuenta ni quién me pegó,
Todo da vueltas como un carrusel,
Locura recorre todita mi piel.
Wake me up before I change again
Remind me the story that I won’t get insane
Tell me why it’s always the same
Explain me the reason why I’m so much in pain
Wake me up before I change again
Remind me the story that I won’t get insane
Tell me why it’s always the same
Explain me the reason why I’m so much in pain
Insane…insane insane, insane…insane insane
Voy perdiendo…perdiendo…voy perdiendo…perdiendo
I’m becoming insane…insane insane, insane…insane insane
Voy perdiendo…perdiendo…voy perdiendo…perdiendo
I’m Becoming INSANE!!!!…………”
-Infected Mushroom
Believe me, I do understand! I had cabin-fever for about a century during one winter in Boston. Every morning that January the wind chill was 60 below zero, and (being a poor student) I had to walk many a block to get on an overcrowded bus, then the subway. Then the snow came and the plows buried the sidewalks, then the outside lanes of the street I shared with Boston drivers. NOT good for mental health!
And, yes, it’s been 90 here TWICE since the new year started, and very little rain.
Maybe you can think up something special to do on the Solstice to appease nature!