Absence makes the feet grow warmer
I grew up in Arizona and central California, so I didn’t see snow every year – or every other year – or, basically, whenever we traveled to where it was.
When I was five or six, my family went camping up in snow country and somehow or another I was being pulled on a sled over a frozen lake. At one point, Dad had paused, and I noticed a hole in the ice. I put my mittened hand down into this hole of water…and quickly found out Why One Does Not Do That. My next clear memory is of sitting in a building (probably a first aid station or ranger station) with a Marathon bar and a mug of cocoa…and feeling my fingers slowly and painfully thawing out.
When I was thirteen, I went on a ski field trip with my entire eighth-grade class. I had never been skiing before, but this was just The Done Thing to Do. I rented skis and paraphernalia the week before, got up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning to catch the bus that would drive us four hours to the ski area, and piled into the bus. I spent the morning on the bunny runs, and in the early afternoon I went off with a boy I liked, who got me to go up on a ski lift to a certain ski run. I went along, rode to the top, and got off…a bit wobbly. I got my skis turned the right way, went down a hill, maneuvered around some moguls and past other skiers, and shakily thought, well this isn’t so bad! And then…I went down the real ski run. (That hadn’t been the ski run, more like the staging area between the ski lift dropoff zone and the ski run itself.) I was screaming like a banshee, dodged other skiers as best I could, and tried to maneuver onto one side or another of the ski run so that I would not be in peoples’ way…and so that I might have a better chance of stopping myself. I finally did…by running into or over something. I fell facedown, twisted an ankle, and had to be helped down the ski lift. I spent the rest of the day in the resort, again with a mug of cocoa (and this time, some painkillers.) I found out that this boy I liked had taken me, a brand new skier, up onto a black diamond run – the most challenging ski runs. For some reason, I haven’t ever had much enthusiasm about skiing since then. Not much interest in that boy, either.
When I was thirty, a snowstorm dumped a foot of snow on the ground overnight. I got up and went out for my usual 7am walk in the nearby park…and the park was absolutely beautiful. I was the first set of footprints on that thick blanket of snow. I walked around the frozen pond, down by the beach, and up to the old harbor. Someone else had been there, and on a bench they’d built a snowman sitting down, dressed in toque and scarf and winter coat, one arm across the back of the bench. The next morning was different, of course. Even though there had been a very light dusting of snow overnight, there were footprints all over from people and dogs. The snowman was missing his head, and a dog had colored one leg a distinct yellow shade. The magic was somewhat dimmed.
Last year, I had just bought my first house. The city got socked with a winter storm, and more snowfall than we generally see – we only get this much snow once in a human generation. The city’s not really equipped to deal with this. Our regular snowfall is half an inch or an inch, enough to look picaresque but not enough to build up or even, in many cases, stay on the ground through the day. People were waiting two hours for the city buses, kids were stranded out in the snow after dark because their schoolbuses couldn’t get to them, and the city’s transportation minister was saying, “I’m not having any problems getting around on the roads.” (Well, yes ma’am, you own a four-wheel vehicle. Now do you care to go pick up all those freezing schoolkids…?) This was a Great Big Snowstorm, though. I found out that my house retains heat very well, I was grateful that I was a telecommuter and didn’t have to try driving in that stuff, and I got some gorgeous photos of the trees and moss-lawn on the east side of my house, all covered with snow. I now also am the proud owner of a pair of Yaktrax and a snow shovel. (Trying to shovel appreciable amounts of snow with one’s kitchen dustpan loses its appeal fairly quickly…but even if a person managed to get down to the local hardware store, either other people had already bought the snow shovels, or the delivery trucks with more snow shovels couldn’t get through.)
This year, we might have snow on Christmas. Then we wouldn’t. Then we might. Then we wouldn’t. Now we definitely aren’t - and it will even be warm-ish for Christmas, with partial sun and temps in the low 40s.
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