A Harsh Winter

This has been a winter that, even before it’s over, can safely be described as unusually tough and relentless… even harsh. I think we’ve been softened up around here, the last several years, by a series of sweet and gentle cold seasons. But winter’s harshness is relative and I must also admit to an aging factor being involved: winters get longer as I get older. Years ago I scoffed at the snowbirds who fled to Florida or Arizona for the cold months. Lately their trips are making more sense. I’m not ready to travel south (yet), but it sure makes me thankful that I don’t live much farther north.

Winter blahs are usually mitigated around here by splendid gifts of a few isolated warm days scattered across January and February. The sun will shine and the thermometer will climb into the 60s or 70s. (Back in ’94 it hit 84 degrees!) You run outside and celebrate such a day—successfully warding off a bad case of cabin fever for another few weeks. Those glorious days are reminders of what’s coming in March and April. They rekindle one’s hope. They’re messengers that spring really will return… just be patient.

But this winter has offered no such respite. Patience withers. The nights have not been colder than normal, but the days have simply refused to warm up much. On blustery days it makes it so easy to stay inside by the woodstove—sipping tea or wine—rather than face winter’s nastiness.

But the culprit that’s tipped this winter’s balance into genuine harshness is snow—an abundance of the wretched white stuff. (It’s interesting that a modest amount of snow is pristine and beautiful, while a glut of it can become ugly.) We were blasted recently by 40 inches of it. We’ve been due for a big dump and here it is! About every six or seven years we get a snowy winter; the last one was in 02/03. A typical season brings us a total of about two feet in the Valley, with mild winters dropping a foot or less; the greatest accumulation here to date was five feet, in 95/96. This year’s calendar has yet to finish February and we’re already headed towards seven feet!

Once upon a time we had ongoing obligations in town, which made us struggle to surmount the deep (and ugly) snows. An old Willys Jeep with a blade pushed the drifts off our quarter-mile long drive—that is, when I could get it to start. Now the Jeep is slowly sinking into the soil; headed towards becoming the focus of an archeological dig in another few centuries. It refused to start a few years ago—during that spate of mild winters, when it wasn’t needed, and I wasn’t highly motivated to fix it. Now, like an old broken-down horse, it is irretrievably out to pasture.

Luckily, our town obligations are now pretty much behind us. Our food supply is bountiful. We’ve got a good backlog of wine and tea and we believe that we can wait out these storms. Sooner or later it will melt… won’t it? Please?