10 Dec The Colder, the Windier, the Better!
“Windswept, biting, howling, piercing, the snow, the wind, the cold. I love it!
Why in the world?
Maybe it started with my Mom. She woke us to slide on the hard, glistening crust, knowing that soon after sunrise it often softened, no longer vast, sweeping expanses over fields and pastures, our runner sleds skidding sideways as we drug our feet to steer
free of trees and old barbed wire. Occasionally the sharp runners cut through, and that icy sharp crust slashed our faces. Undeterred we went on, pinkening the snow with a little blood. No runner sled? A sap bucket cover, the grain shovel sat on backward with
the handle between our legs, a piece of cardboard would do. No LL Bean clothing for us, usually our wrists raw and chaffed from cold and wet, undeterred. The farm pond? Endless skating, our own little shed with woodstove and benches for the neighborhood, hours
and hours of Crack the Whip and Fox and Geese.
Maybe it was my Dad. No longer a child, we’d take the snowmobile with a sled filled with chainsaw , gas, oil, and tools to the woods irregardless of the temperature and spend the afternoon putting up firewood for the next winter, our face’s red from the cold
but sweating from the work, enjoying the benefits of sawing off blocks with no fear of cutting through to dirt in the deep snow.
“Let’s go home and rest!”, Dad would say, at about 4 o’clock, meaning it was time to feed and milk the cows.
Maybe it was my ability to get lost in a good story – and so often it was a cold setting. “To Build a Fire” by Jack London was gripping. “Bette! Bette!”, someone wanted me for something, but I was lost in the pages, myself the hero trudging with determination
across the frozen tundra. “The Long Walk”? “Last of the Breed”? “The Endless Steppe”? Have you been lost in those pages, too, perhaps when chores or school or bedtime was waiting?
It is compelling, drawing, riveting, yes, enthralling, the weather, in this case the cold, in some other living the hot, or the drought, or the flood.”