Pride While Thriving
January 7th, 2005,As readers know, I felt some dread about the coming of winter. Four years of living in the mid-Atlantic climate of New Jersey and two years in the Mediterranean climate of California made me wonder if I could stand the cold. Fortunately, that dread seems to have dissipated and has been replaced with, strangely enough, something like joy mixed with some pride. The joy comes about, I think, because my sensations of winter so far bring back pleasant memories. As I feel the cold air on my face, my subconscious associates it with good times: sledding downhill at breakneck speed, skating on the bumpy ice of a lake, cross-country skiing across an undulating prairie. The pride? I think it comes from a sense of successful adaptation, a feeling of resourcefulness that says, I thrive here.
We must be wary of pride, of course. Mine is born of reality as well as illusion. The reality-based pride results from overcoming the minor hardships of 21st-century life in an Upper Midwestern winter. I swell as I assert a he-manly power over the elements. I feel that real pride when I suit up in a way that keeps me warm when outside and the temperature is below zero, or when I help my family do so as well. I feel it when I turn the half-frozen mixture of California windshield washer fluid in my car into a more potent brew that can withstand Minnesota temperatures. I feel it when I de-ice the sidewalk and driveway with salt and blows from a heavy-headed ice chopper.
The illusory element of this pride? That’s the part that tells me I am better than others: I am stronger than you because I live here and you whine about a fifty-degree day. Well, how hard can it be to thrive here when I spend most of my time indoors, kept warm by fossil fuels, high-tech clothing, and food bought in a grocery store? If I believe I am a rugged survivor of winter, I should consider all the technology and social systems that support me. The Inuit man who lived hundreds of years ago above the Arctic Circle (1700 miles north of here) and fashioned the harpoon that fed his family, he had reason to be proud, not this wintering Walter Mitty.
Recent Particulars of Winter
On Saturday, New Year’s Day, the first day of 2005, a nasty ice storm hit. My wife and I went into Cub Foods around noon, and when we came out an hour later, freezing rain was falling, and our car was coated with ice. Later we heard thunder, a strange event in winter. When it was all over, a thick layer of ice topped with a little snow covered everything. The result has been a lot of careful driving and time spent clearing ice from cars, steps, walks, and driveways.
My wife has been quite concerned about the driving conditions, as she should be. As I drove downtown the other day, I saw a minivan that had hit a telephone pole. The driver was on her cell phone and waved an OK sign at the man who approached her offering help. She must have hit the breaks too hard at the stop sign and slid on ice. Despite the city’s best attempts to lay down sand and salt, it can still be icy.
I can understand people who view all of these aspects of winter as inconveniences. In most of California, you don’t have to spend five or ten minutes dressing each time you go outside. You don’t have to shovel snow or removing ice (though you might have to tend to your lawn). You don’t have to watch the weather report for snow and ice before your drive to Grandma’s house (though you might have to watch out for fog).
A few days after the ice storm, I realized I needed an ice chopper like the one my parents have. This is a simple rectangular piece of metal with a slightly sharpened blade about eight inches wide and fixed to a long handle. All of the ice choppers were out at one hardware store. I went to another and saw near the front door a strange-looking device that looked like a jack-hammer; it was surrounded by broken ice shards. An employee told me the tool was originally designed for removing floor tiles; he said he didn’t think he’d keep using it. Inside I found what appeared to be a good ice chopper–made by Yo-Ho of Monticello, Iowa. It has a black blade that is heavier than my parents’ chopper and appeals to the consumer-materialist in me.
While the states south of us have been socked by storm after storm and lots of snow, we’ve had little of the stuff. The Twin Cities has the least amount of snow this far into winter in 114 years–less than three inches, even counting that ugly ice on New Year’s Day. This fact comes to me by way of today’s front page of the Star Tribune, which featured a story on the “brown winter.” (Northern and southern Minnesota have more snow.)
Snow acts as an insulating blanket on the ground, so with the cold temperatures we’ve had recently (ranging from about 10 below zero Fahrenheit to 20 above) the frost penetrates deeper into the ground. It will kill perennial garden plants unless they have been covered with leaves. Our plants got only a thin coating of leaves, so they may be in trouble.
Our quiet little neighborhood had some excitement as a result of the penetrating frost. As we drove down our street yesterday evening, I saw water pouring down the sidewalk and gutter of a cross-street. Then I saw further up the hill that water was gushing by some condos. We stopped by the police station and notified them of the problem. When we came back a couple of hours later, a city crew was repairing the damage. I spoke to one of the men working in the dark and cold. He said it was the third water main brake this winter in the city. Without snow cover, he said, the ground freezes to a greater depth, moves, and breaks pipes. Such is the power of physics, of water expanding and soil moving, of winter’s grip.
Weather Facts
From the Star Tribune, January 1: “According to Prof. Mark Seeley at the University of Minnesota, excluding the polar regions of Alaska, Minnesota reported the coldest temperature in the United States on a total of 55 days in 2004.” The national low (always excluding Alaska in this column) was minus 39 in Grand Forks, ND, on January 5 and minus 44 in Embarrass, MN on January 6. Temperatures have sometimes been thirty degrees warmer here in southern Minnesota.
I’m keeping an eye on Canada, where the people of the Prairies (their word for what we call the plains or the Midwest) are weathering even colder weather. Moscow, Russia, is relatively balmy, meanwhile, with highs above freezing.