On an endless winter

Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That’s just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy–a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick’s Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn’t frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn’t that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can’t even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don’t have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.