Friday, February 07, 2003

The Sensations of Winter

Waking, in the winter, you always know if it’s snowed overnight. Even through the pre-coffee blur of not-yet-awake, there’s a different quality to the traffic noise, muted by the snow. There’s a low rumble of city snow ploughs, out scraping the streets. And then, the realisation dawns that you’ll have to go dig the car out. Thus, tempting us to roll back under the covers, winter grants us the chance to become better people in small ways.

This Superbowl Sunday, while others paid homage to Mammon and the mayhem of professional football, I was out acquiring virtue in the yard. For those of you who were stuck inside, glued to the TV all day, let me tell you that, outside, it had snowed like crazy. And I was there, first thing, with my trusty shovel in my mitt, a lonely pioneer silhouetted against the elemental landscape of suburbia under snow.

Unlike other folks on our block, my household doesn’t own a noisy, polluting snow blower. We’re way too pure for that. Instead, we seek redemption through good works - in shovelling our 50 foot driveway by hand. Then, as we clear our stretch of the sidewalk and tree lawn, we exercise the New England virtues of perseverence and civic responsibility. While I shovel, I think on rules of frugality: “Diligence is the mother of good luck”; “There are no gains without pains”; and, most applicable, “Plough deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep.” Out of breath, I heave a shovelful aside and mutter, “Of course, some people would rather buy a snow-blower, and then pay money to go to a fancy health club,” another shovel and heave, “when they could get just as good a workout clearing the sidewalk for free.” Fueled with these self-righteous observations, I work away, straightening up occasionally to flex my back and sense of accumulating virtue.

Moral exercise or no, shoveling on a quiet street surely does a person some good. I do most of my work sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen and the only rhythm is the staccato of my hunt and peck typing. My thoughts stab around, randomly, like a hen scratching in a barnyard. But after 5 minutes shoveling on the driveway, my thought falls into the slow, productive cadence of digging. Against the monochrome backdrop of snowy streets, it feels like I’m getting down to the essentials, seeing things whole, as if the big picture might emerge. An unaccustomed ache in my back adds gratifying proof of authenticity.

There are still things about the Midwestern winter that surprise me each year. Other than the quantities of snow, I’m still not used to the dry cold. I grew up in a country where, as one Canadian visitor noted, “even the sidewalks grow mould.” In England, winter is cold and damp. So I still find it odd to use a humidifier in winter, even though I know the crack of static and the uncomfortable feel of chapped lips.

I’m still not comfortable with winter driving. Sometimes, though, concentrating on driving a snow storm, a kind of detachment takes over. The snow spirals mesmerically against the windshield, and Self is suspended in a white box of muffled sound. Unaacountably, not all Hoosier drivers attain this state of Zen mindfulness of Being Mortal on the Roads in the Snow, but they keep talking on their cell phones, checking their hair, eating their donuts. Well, perhaps one day I, too, will become equally blasé about winter driving.

The extremes of winter, what the cold can do, exhilarates me. I get a childish thrill from feeling my wet hair freeze and rattle around my face, as I walk from the swimming pool back to my car. In truly cold weather, your eyes water and you get a characteristic prickling in the nostrils, as if tiny, elfin fists tugged at your nose hairs.

Enjoying the vivid sensations of winter, for Michiana Chronicles, this is Louise Collins.

Broadcast by Louise Collins on February 07, 2003
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