Category Archives: winter

On walking in the snow

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Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.

On walking in the snow

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Walking in the snow is balm to the jagged nerves that the holidays tend to exacerbate. While it was snowing a couple of days ago, I went out for a walk to think about things. Into all lives a certain amount of chaos will always fall: people get older, they get sick and die, or they spend extended amounts of time in the process of dying. This isn’t morbid, it’s just real. The snow falls and reminds me that the seasons change, time goes by, we all get older, everything changes, nothing stays the same except the snow. Walking in the snow reminded me of all the other times in my life that I have walked in the snow–in Minnesota, in Spain, in Texas, in Nevada, in Canada. The snow is silent, gentle, and impersonal–it falls on the just and the unjust equally, and it always will. It covers the sleeping landscape, giving the earth a chance to sleep under an icy blanket, a white death shroud that lovingly envelops everything. When you walk in the snow, you become a part of the shroud, you are a part of death, the silence of the falling snow, the eternity of a single moment. A single snow flake is proof that the entire universe moves towards lowest energy, towards entropy, and we are only incidental players on a universal stage.

On very cold weather

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A cold front, a huge blob of cold, meta-cold air, is drifting south out of Canada this evening. Wind chills are already in the double-digits below zero in most of the area, and I suspect that tomorrow will not be a nice day for going out, visiting, shopping, church, or most anything else. It will be forty degrees colder when I get up in the morning than it right now. You’d think I’d be used to such outrageous weather, but living in central Texas makes a body soft and whimpy. We don’t get this kind of weather in Waco. We often get triple-digit heat–nothing unusual there–but we never, ever, get double-digit temperatures below zero, windchill or otherwise. Oh, yes, we have the other extreme, but if you just stay out of the sun, the weather won’t kill you, no matter how hot it is. Here in the north, however, the wind howls, the house shakes, and frigid arctic air is barreling down on the midwest, making all of our lives just a little more interesting than we really need. Of course, I own good winter gear–a down coat, big gloves, boots, long underwear, a big woolly scarf, a down-filled hat–but I could always use more. I worry about the animals that have to stay outside. I’m sure they have burrowed in for the night, keeping a low, low profile with this ugly wind blowing. After living for twenty-plus years in Minnesota, you’d think I wouldn’t even notice such a thing. In the meantime, what is really surprising is how most people just go one with their lives as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I saw one lady at the gas station just now with no coat on. Post-script: it will warm up just fine by the end of the week.

On very cold weather

Posted on by

A cold front, a huge blob of cold, meta-cold air, is drifting south out of Canada this evening. Wind chills are already in the double-digits below zero in most of the area, and I suspect that tomorrow will not be a nice day for going out, visiting, shopping, church, or most anything else. It will be forty degrees colder when I get up in the morning than it right now. You’d think I’d be used to such outrageous weather, but living in central Texas makes a body soft and whimpy. We don’t get this kind of weather in Waco. We often get triple-digit heat–nothing unusual there–but we never, ever, get double-digit temperatures below zero, windchill or otherwise. Oh, yes, we have the other extreme, but if you just stay out of the sun, the weather won’t kill you, no matter how hot it is. Here in the north, however, the wind howls, the house shakes, and frigid arctic air is barreling down on the midwest, making all of our lives just a little more interesting than we really need. Of course, I own good winter gear–a down coat, big gloves, boots, long underwear, a big woolly scarf, a down-filled hat–but I could always use more. I worry about the animals that have to stay outside. I’m sure they have burrowed in for the night, keeping a low, low profile with this ugly wind blowing. After living for twenty-plus years in Minnesota, you’d think I wouldn’t even notice such a thing. In the meantime, what is really surprising is how most people just go one with their lives as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I saw one lady at the gas station just now with no coat on. Post-script: it will warm up just fine by the end of the week.

On snow flakes

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The engineering and architecture of the snow flake is really a very simple hexagonal lattice which forms regular symmetrical hexagonal prisms. Your car, however, will slip and slide the same whether you know that or not. Every winter I am fascinated by snow and our relationship to it. Where I live in central Texas, it rarely snows at all. The fresh white blanket of a recent snowfall, however, adds incredible beauty to the frozen and desolate landscape of winter. Winter in the Northland is a devastating and painful experience of cold and ice, temperatures so low you have to put a “minus” sign in front of the number. Yet when it warms up to just below freezing, it snows and we have to plow or shovel or go sliding into the ditch–love, hate snow flakes, you might say. Watching falling snow has such a calming effect on me that I can nap at the drop of hat during a fresh snow–I have a Youtube channel on my computer which only shows falling snow. Yet it is slippery, and on more than one occasion I have performed awkward ballet moves on my way down to the ground, proving once and for all that gravity is real and that I am mere flesh and blood that may be broken. My one and only spinout in a car occurred while driving in fresh snow. Snow flakes are of the most delicate combinations of frozen ice crystals, microscopic, really, but they have the power to wreak to havoc on the populations where they fall, clogging up streets and highways, slicking up sidewalks and driveways, making life just a little more dangerous than it already is. So one would have to say that snow is both a blessing and curse, but for the moment, I prefer to see it as a blessing.

On snow flakes

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The engineering and architecture of the snow flake is really a very simple hexagonal lattice which forms regular symmetrical hexagonal prisms. Your car, however, will slip and slide the same whether you know that or not. Every winter I am fascinated by snow and our relationship to it. Where I live in central Texas, it rarely snows at all. The fresh white blanket of a recent snowfall, however, adds incredible beauty to the frozen and desolate landscape of winter. Winter in the Northland is a devastating and painful experience of cold and ice, temperatures so low you have to put a “minus” sign in front of the number. Yet when it warms up to just below freezing, it snows and we have to plow or shovel or go sliding into the ditch–love, hate snow flakes, you might say. Watching falling snow has such a calming effect on me that I can nap at the drop of hat during a fresh snow–I have a Youtube channel on my computer which only shows falling snow. Yet it is slippery, and on more than one occasion I have performed awkward ballet moves on my way down to the ground, proving once and for all that gravity is real and that I am mere flesh and blood that may be broken. My one and only spinout in a car occurred while driving in fresh snow. Snow flakes are of the most delicate combinations of frozen ice crystals, microscopic, really, but they have the power to wreak to havoc on the populations where they fall, clogging up streets and highways, slicking up sidewalks and driveways, making life just a little more dangerous than it already is. So one would have to say that snow is both a blessing and curse, but for the moment, I prefer to see it as a blessing.

On shoveling snow

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Growing up in Minnesota, shoveling snow is just another part of life, like breathing or getting a drink of water. What most people underestimate when they shovel snow is how heavy the white stuff can be and how much energy needs to be exerted to move it. Snow blowers help, but you also have to run the snow blower, which is no piece of cake either. The problem with moving snow, shoveling snow, is that you have to do it in the cold, so do you dress for the cold or for heavy work you will have to do? Sweating and huffing and puffing until you fall, exhausted, into a snow bank, vowing to move to Florida as soon as possible. The shovels, themselves, are partially the problem. No one has ever designed the ergonomic shovel because those designing shovels are never the people using the shovels. Shovel designers probably live in Brownsville, Texas, and have never seen snow in their lives. Shoveling snow at zero degrees Fahrenheit with a stiff wind blowing out of the northwest is not a recommended scenario, but happens more often than you would think. Snow, blind, inert, unfeeling, does not cooperate with those moving it. It blows in your face, accumulates in drifts as hard as concrete, and unless you move it (or the wind), it stays where it lands. Yet, after an hour of hard work, is there any greater satisfaction of looking back over your clean sidewalk and walking into the house for a hot cup of cocoa knowing that everyone can walk down your sidewalk without having to fight the snow.

On shoveling snow

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Growing up in Minnesota, shoveling snow is just another part of life, like breathing or getting a drink of water. What most people underestimate when they shovel snow is how heavy the white stuff can be and how much energy needs to be exerted to move it. Snow blowers help, but you also have to run the snow blower, which is no piece of cake either. The problem with moving snow, shoveling snow, is that you have to do it in the cold, so do you dress for the cold or for heavy work you will have to do? Sweating and huffing and puffing until you fall, exhausted, into a snow bank, vowing to move to Florida as soon as possible. The shovels, themselves, are partially the problem. No one has ever designed the ergonomic shovel because those designing shovels are never the people using the shovels. Shovel designers probably live in Brownsville, Texas, and have never seen snow in their lives. Shoveling snow at zero degrees Fahrenheit with a stiff wind blowing out of the northwest is not a recommended scenario, but happens more often than you would think. Snow, blind, inert, unfeeling, does not cooperate with those moving it. It blows in your face, accumulates in drifts as hard as concrete, and unless you move it (or the wind), it stays where it lands. Yet, after an hour of hard work, is there any greater satisfaction of looking back over your clean sidewalk and walking into the house for a hot cup of cocoa knowing that everyone can walk down your sidewalk without having to fight the snow.

On freezing weather

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In central Texas, we are all freezing to death. After weeks and weeks, months and months of scorching days and 100 degree days, we are floundering in a morass of cold, rainy, freezing rain days and nights. By Minnesota standards this is not cold weather, but if you compare the relative coldness compared to our normal temperatures, we are really hurting. Even last Wednesday we were still in our shirt sleeves, no coats or hats, no sweaters or gloves–it was almost 80F on that day. The next day, however, was another story as temperatures plunged sixty degrees into the upper twenties. Perhaps if the temperatures had slowly gone down, bit by bit, we might have gotten used to the changing temperatures, and it wouldn’t have felt so cold. Since then, we have been walking around bundled up like a bunch of errant Michelin Men, dressed in multiple layers, hunting for our seldom used hats and our dusty gloves. We lean into the bitter northwest wind as if this will make it hurt less. We pull back into our coats like scared turtles, trying to stay warm. Perhaps if the wind were less biting, or the damp air less frigid, then we might have a chance against the cold air. So we go about our daily duties, off to work, walking to class, cutting across campus to get a cup of coffee, pretending that we are not freezing to death. Perhaps the best way to get used to the cold is to spend some time out in it? Living in the blazing temperatures of central Texas exacts a high toll: we are no longer any good at dealing with a cold day. We are wimps.

On freezing weather

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In central Texas, we are all freezing to death. After weeks and weeks, months and months of scorching days and 100 degree days, we are floundering in a morass of cold, rainy, freezing rain days and nights. By Minnesota standards this is not cold weather, but if you compare the relative coldness compared to our normal temperatures, we are really hurting. Even last Wednesday we were still in our shirt sleeves, no coats or hats, no sweaters or gloves–it was almost 80F on that day. The next day, however, was another story as temperatures plunged sixty degrees into the upper twenties. Perhaps if the temperatures had slowly gone down, bit by bit, we might have gotten used to the changing temperatures, and it wouldn’t have felt so cold. Since then, we have been walking around bundled up like a bunch of errant Michelin Men, dressed in multiple layers, hunting for our seldom used hats and our dusty gloves. We lean into the bitter northwest wind as if this will make it hurt less. We pull back into our coats like scared turtles, trying to stay warm. Perhaps if the wind were less biting, or the damp air less frigid, then we might have a chance against the cold air. So we go about our daily duties, off to work, walking to class, cutting across campus to get a cup of coffee, pretending that we are not freezing to death. Perhaps the best way to get used to the cold is to spend some time out in it? Living in the blazing temperatures of central Texas exacts a high toll: we are no longer any good at dealing with a cold day. We are wimps.