Warning! State of Emergency! Stay Home! No unofficial travel recommended! Polar vortex! Wintry Mix! Black ice! Wind Chill below freezing! Single digits! Frigid!
To listen to the weather reports, you would think it was the end of the world, instead of just normal winter weather. It's supposed to be snowy, icy and cold. It's winter. Or, as the American Indians would say more poetically, it is the Moon of the Strong Cold or the Moon When the Snow Drifts into Teepees.
Growing up in upstate New York, I always loved winter. It meant sleigh riding down Devil's Hill, ice skating on Central Park Lake and building snow forts, with discarded Christmas trees as the roof. My mother always invoked the "We are pioneers" refrain, when the snow dump was heavy and we all were enlisted to help with shovelling, even though my father had various snow blowers over the years. He had a small electric "snow thrower" once where the cord would inadvertently get in the way and then you wondered how safe it was to have small cuts all along the cord. The biggest snow blower was an orange gasoline-powered behemoth from Sears that Dad kept on the landing going into the cellar. He would start the motor up inside and the whole house would shake. I never got involved in "raking the roof" which my youngest brother has fond memories of, but I do remember knocking down icicles that lined the roof all along our long driveway.
Today, because of black ice, Gary had to park his car and walk the last 2 miles to the hospital. Perhaps he was seized by that pioneering upstate spirit from his youth. I, on the other hand, decided not to venture outside and felt imprisoned, looking out the windows and wondering when the icy rain would stop. I guess I've lost some of that childhood excitement about winter and am just waiting for the Moon of Popping Trees and the Moon of the Red Grass Appearing. It's only mid January, but can the Moon When the Ponies Shed be that far away?
No comments:
Post a Comment