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Winter still holds too much beauty
Published 12:00pm Wednesday, December 30, 2009It was a disturbing thought in the pre-dawn dark — so disturbing that I had to stop what I was doing, straighten up and pause for a moment to give the idea its due. One the surface, it was simple and clear. But why now, after all these years, did the idea cross my mind?
“If I lived in California I wouldn’t be doing this.”
That was the troubling thought.
What I was doing, when so rudely interrupted, was pushing snow off our driveway. It hadn’t even stopped snowing yet, but I didn’t want to leave icy eskers down the driveway later when we headed to church. That was four decades of habit and conditioning at work, even if it didn’t make a lot of sense in the bigger scheme of things.
So it was a shock when I found myself thinking enviously that people who live in California could sleep an extra half-hour on Sunday mornings. They might get shaken off their foundations by an earthquake or buried in a mudslide, but they at least wouldn’t have to shovel snow for a third day in a row. They wouldn’t be worried about ice dams.
As far as I could remember it was the first time, ever, that I had thought there might be merit to spending a few months in a southern climate every year.
Most of us, as we get older, find ourselves doing things we never thought we would do – or not doing things we always thought that we would do. We see friends die in accidents, read about people our own age dying of heart attacks and strokes… and we think a little more about what used to be the unthinkable. And sometimes, just by chance, we get ever closer to learning that we aren’t bullet-proof.
Usually all of that adds up to a sort of wisdom – or, at any rate, a greater understanding of how the world works and a realization that things won’t always be the way they are today. But it was a shock to find myself thinking of abandoning, even for a minute, a climate that I have loved all my life. As I stood in the driveway and wondered, it occurred to me that it wasn’t just shoveling snow that had triggered the idea. It was the dry skin, the close calls on icy roads and the long hours of darkness – a hundred little things that add up to making winter a challenge.
I suddenly, truly understood why so many of my older friends slip away to the south at this time of year. Before, I always harbored a doubt in my mind about how any real Minnesotan could head to Arizona or Florida or other points south. Before, it had always smacked of bailing out.
Now I understand.
Understanding, however, is not the same thing as acceptance, and I worried off and on all day Sunday about what it might mean. Was it a sign of advancing age? A sign of wisdom? Whatever it was, it troubled me right up until Monday morning, when I bundled up to start the car.
Then, as I drove, I watched a fat, orange finger of light blaze up from the rising sun, highlighted by tiny snow crystals still blowing in the atmosphere after the weekend’s storms. I looked out the window at the beautiful, wind-formed shapes of drifts and thought about how good the skiing will be now that we’ve had a decent bit of snow.
Maybe, I thought, wintering in a warmer climate will be a good idea – some day. But for now, winter still holds too much beauty.
