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| Snow almost up to our kitchen window in upstate NY during a typical winter. The red object is a bird feeder, about 4 feet off the ground. |
In 1591, William Shakespeare coined the phrase "winter of discontent" for his play, Richard III. But while the bard waxes metaphorically on sociopolitical drama, I tend to take his phrase more literally.
Wintertime does not make me content! Shakespeare and I may be from different continents, but we're both of the same hemisphere - the Northern Hemisphere - where wintertimes are chillier and snowier the farther north one goes. And Shakespeare obviously played on those climate tensions.
Snow, ice, frigid air, shorter and darker days, bare trees - the longer I live, the more I'm finding them to be acquired tastes... that I've apparently lost!
I know most people begrudgingly tolerate Northern winters, and some actually enjoy them. My cousins in Finland send me postcard-perfect photographs of Scandinavian snowfalls and pine trees laden in fluffy stoles of sparkling whiteness. And while it's good that those who must annually endure snowy seasons can find beauty in them, I confess that increasingly, I find their beauty to be even less than skin-deep... because my skin gets chilled simply looking at those wintry scenes!
Besides, I've already put in my own snow time.
During most of my growing-up years, my family lived on the north shore of Oneida Lake, in rural upstate New York, smack in the middle of lake-effect snow country. If you've ever lived on the eastern or southern sides of any of the Great Lakes, you know about lake-effect snow. The term refers to the meteorological phenomenon of abundant, prolific precipitation resulting from super-cold air passing over warmer open water. That dynamic tends to create starkly uneven bands of snow as the air continues to move further east and south.
Lake-effect snow isn't just flurries, or even a blizzard, but a snowstorm that can distribute drastically different amounts of snowfall within a relatively limited area. I once saw a video online taken by a police officer in Buffalo - a notorious recipient of the phenomenon - who was standing at an intersection, with a blizzard consuming one half of his video screen, and as he panned a full 360 degrees, sunshine and dry ground appeared. The visuals aren't usually that stark, but you get the idea.
During exceptionally cold winters, the fresh water of the Great Lakes cools so much that ice can cover much of their surface. That usually reduces the chances of dramatic lake-effect snow. But during winters when the Great Lakes don't freeze much, the chances of lake-effect snow increase. This winter has been one of the latter, and the region of New York State where we used to live has been hammered with a couple of abnormally heavy snow events, thanks to lake-effect precipitation off of Lake Ontario.
Our little village of Cleveland, for example, received over two feet of snow just last weekend, and much of the region endured blizzard conditions for almost five days straight this past week. Upwards of seven feet fell in bands across the far northern reaches of exurban Syracuse, from Oswego to Camden to Rome. Some roofs are caving in from the snow, particularly since this has been the second massive snowfall in about a month. Meanwhile, from Syracuse southward, snowfall has been far more manageable.
Of course, as a kid who didn't have to drive or go to work, lake-effect snow was great! Due to the fickle nature of lake-effect snowfalls, our school district wouldn't necessarily be forced to close, but when it did, my brother and I played all day out in the stuff. We had thick, bulky, hooded snow suits and chunky snow boots, plus ski masks and hats and mittens and scarves... I remember going through several pairs of mittens a day, dashing inside to get a new pair after getting my previous pair soaking wet, or clumped with marble-sized balls of ice. Even with clean, dry mittens, my hands would be bright red and numb from the cold.
Mom would bake cookies or brownies and serve them to us with hot chocolate, with fresh-made soups for lunch. I don't know which made my nose run more - the steaming warm food inside, or the biting cold and wind outside!
We lived in the country, so there were no immediate neighbors with which to play. But I don't know that my brother and I knew enough to miss having playmates. We built snow forts, we skidded around on our bikes in the slippery mess, we slid down a little hill on one side of our property, we "tested" the ice atop nearby brooks, we threw sticks into the snow for our collie to eagerly retrieve. I especially remember snuggling down into drifts softly accumulating around the massive pine trees flanking the front of our century-old farmhouse, reveling in a silence so pure that it was almost like I could hear each flake settle on top of each other.
Have you ever noticed how a calm snowfall can help muffle many other sounds? It creates almost a cocoon-type escape from the harshness noises normally inflict. Later, when I lived in New York, I would marvel how the city was never more soft or placid or intimate as during a steady, wind-less snowfall, when even boisterous buses and clattering cabs were reduced in decibels by the enveloping snow.
Unfortunately, there's only a brief window of time during which snow's aesthetics were ever enjoyable, at least in urbanity. Not long after the last flakes fell, that snow would become dirty, and troublesome, and annoying.
And that's only as a pedestrian, trying to navigate it! Thankfully, I've never had to drive in a northern winter, since I didn't have a car while adulting up there.
Well, except for one time.
My brother got married during my NYC years, and one January, my aunt and I flew from Brooklyn to Detroit for their wedding, which was being held in my sister-in-law's native Canada. We met my parents and my maternal grandmother - who'd all flown up from Texas - at the Detroit airport, and got the rental car Dad had reserved for our drive into Ontario.
We'd landed right before a blizzard swept through the region. Plus, older snow was already everyplace. I didn't think anything of it until Dad announced that I would be doing the driving. He caught me completely by surprise.
We'd all assumed he'd do the driving. But no. At the car rental place, perhaps after being confronted by all the snow in real time, he turned to me and said, "You live in Brooklyn now, but it's been decades since I've driven in this!"
His logic would have been fine, except for the fact that I didn't own a car in New York. As for the rest of us, my aunt was a native New Yorker who'd never gotten her driver's license. Mom never liked driving, and like my aunt, my maternal grandmother hadn't ever learned to drive, either.
But Dad no longer trusted himself in snow, and I guess he figured the fact that I lived in snow country meant I'd acquired the driving skills for it by osmosis. Or something.
So we piled into that light-blue four-door Chrysler New Yorker (aptly named, I thought, all things considered), and I slowly freaked out as we crossed Detroit's towering Ambassador Bridge into Windsor, and then down through miles and miles of blustery snow that created something of a moonscape out of the dormant farmland. The freeway we were ostensibly traveling hadn't yet been plowed, and Canadian drivers - obviously used to such grim conditions - were plowing along themselves, speeding past us on either side. Meanwhile, here I was, with most of our little family in one vehicle, all depending on me for safety as we trekked into what seemed like the Canadian wilderness. When we got to our hotel a couple of hours later, its parking lot had already been plowed out, with snowbanks on either side higher than our Chrysler.
We drove back to Detroit the next evening after the wedding, and all the roads had been scraped clean of any snow or ice, so Dad wasn't interested in anybody else driving but him.
When we lived upstate, Dad always seemed perfectly at ease driving in snow, ice, blizzards... whatever the weather. I don't recall one instance of him fretting over precipitation or road conditions when he was behind the wheel.
Our country farmhouse graced the top of a small hill, with a long gravel driveway that snaked up from the road on one side, around to our back door, and then along down the other side of our lawn to the road. Dad normally kept both sides mostly clear with his snow-blower. But when snowstorms hit while we were away, that driveway could get tricky.
While returning home during a blizzard, Dad and Mom sometimes calmly discussed options for whichever side of our driveway might offer the easiest trek up that hill, depending on conditions. After making their selection, Dad would then accelerate as we'd drive up the road towards our house, which was safe to do because there was hardly any other traffic. When he'd reach either part of our driveway, there would be no braking - he'd simply point our vehicle up the hill and keep accelerating! Most times, we'd zip up there and around to the back of the house in several thrilling seconds' worth of spinning tires, fishtailing, and snow flying from our vehicle's wheelwells.
Dad developed such a knack for navigating that driveway, only rarely would our car ever get mired in the snow.
Oh, that snow. Even as a kid, that snow eventually got old. I remember a springtime or two when snowstorms kept moving through to the point where my brother and I would get a shovel and dig down through all the whiteness to check and make sure our grassy lawn was still there.
How liberating would seem the first spring day when we no longer had to wear those heavy, clunky winter boots! My feet, back in their sneakers and shoes, felt so lightweight and carefree! And Mom would clean our snow boots one final time and put them in storage for the next few months... until the cycle of snow would start all over again.
Because summers up north always seemed so short, and winters seemed so long.
Maybe the best thing about winter is that it makes one so glad when it's over. Or... maybe I'm just never content with the weather. Down here in Texas, I'm always glad when our blistering summers are over, too!
Happy mediums are often elusive, aren't they?
Maybe it's why reality and facts often get described as "cold".
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