Preparing For Winter
We had a very dry summer, followed by a
somewhat dry autumn; the leaves lacked their usual brilliant color, but under
the circumstances, they did exactly what they were supposed to do – warn
us that “it” was coming
again.
“It” is the cold
and the snow and all the little things which hurry along under their skirts, and
these have to do mainly with warmth and safety. If you’ve lived here long
enough, you don’t think that much about doing: A day arrives, there is
the barely audible “click” in your brain, and everything
changes.
The garage is organized so
that an automobile will actually be able to fit inside it. This is made
possible by moving herbicides to the warm basement of the house so that they
will be “safe,” and useable again next Spring when you move them
back to the garage so that you can find them again in the autumn to put back in
the basement. Unless they have reached their “use by date,” in
which case you throw them out recycle them
appropriately.
Back in the corner of
the garage, the snow tires have sat since the Spring. Now is the time to get
them into the back of the car to take them to the tire place where a husky lad
will put them on the car and place the “summer tires” in the back
of the car. This gives you an early season opportunity to hurt your back or at
least say that you hurt your back. What brings relief to your back is to find
someone else to do the snow blowing or shoveling. Money is likely involved, but
this is a good investment – in fact, among the
best.
The same goes for removing the
fallen leaves from the yard. Find somebody who will do it for you. Write the
check. Complain for no more than three days about the cost, and give daily
thanks for the fact that you have chosen to provide employment in our difficult
economy and no longer choose to do it
yourself.
I have some driveway
markers, basically green poles on a spring which help keep people on the
driveway. They are an attractive dark green color until you try to find the
base in the grassy ground – also dark green. If you wait until the grass
is no longer dark green, the ground may be too hard to dig the hole for any new
markers. There will come a point when you leave the markers in the garage next
to the tires and await perfect installation conditions which never seem to
arrive.
The winter clothes which may
have been properly stored in the basement (or may not have if summer cold
weather arrived as the clothes were finding their own way down a couple of
floors). If the latter situation applies, be sure to check the laundry and
other nearby locations. Once the clothes are returned to their winter
locations, check them for wear, newly observed design and styling flaws, and
then put them in the place where they probably should be all the time
anyway.
Shovels, ice chippers, bags
of sand, and similar tools of the season need to be placed by the front door,
and when this happens you are reminded to turn off the outside faucets. In
order to do this, one frequently has to step over the winter clothes which were
not put away, so one must be
careful.
Winter requires an array of
footwear for warmth and safety. When I was a kid, we had black galoshes with
metal buckles. Ugly and cold, but at least they kept your feet dry. Nowadays
you can choose between ugly insulated boots, boots with felt insulation, so big
you have to walk like a giant in them, slip-on boots with hearty soles, thingies
with sharp points that slip over boots for walking on ice. Beyond that, there
are walking sleds (“Sparks, as they call them in Scandinavia), walking
poles, cross country skiis, snow
shoes.
Others who live here believe
that engines are essential in the winter – snowmobiles and similar
contrivances. Many of us believe that these provide too much pleasure in the
winter and are creatures of the devil, environmentally wasteful, and so, in a
word, purposeless. I’m sorry to report that these machines and their
brethren seem to be a very popular way of dealing with early darkness and
perennial cold and snow – there is almost always the
so.
The furnace needs to be checked
and tuned, supplies of cocoa and whisky to be aggregated (part of blizzard
prevention), extra blankets put on or near the beds, the battery powered radio
located in case of power failure), the safety supplies for the car (blankets,
ice scrapers (several for different kinds of ice and as back-up), sleeping bag,
small shovel, bag of sand, coffee can for individual relief. Inside the house
those of us without a lot of hair look around the nightcap to be found, second
only in importance to blankets and duvets. Hot water bottles are also a good
investment. Not only are they warm, but if you are surprised by them, you can
learn the difference between first and second degree
burns.
Lastly, the winter vocabulary
returns to active use. This is aided by a lot of preparatory discussion having
to do changes in the weather – looks like snow, could be unpleasant
tomorrow, have to change the oil in the car, better tell the cat, bring in the
brass monkeys – all that discussion which is really the way we warn each
other and assure each other that we are prepared and prepared to endure it
together.
Our vocabularies change,
too, so that windchill, black ice, turning into a skid, braking distance, blue
wax, kitty litter (a sand substitute), and a whole host of curse words not
required the rest of the year arrive as though freshly minted. Other words used
during this time are Florida, Mexico, Vegas, California, the Caribbean, Hawaii,
even Iowa.
But of course, we never
are completely prepared for winter, not even for the gray day when the first
white flakes descend from the sky, land, linger for just an instant before the
last heat of the ground melts them. That experience is as old as we are, but
new and simple and beautiful each
autumn.
And then, alas, experience
starts to accumulate and linger on our roads and sidewalks, and steps.
Outwardly we continue to complain, but secretly we just look forward to crawling
into our beds, snuggling under the covers with a good book, surrounded by the
quiet of a winter’s night and being grateful just for being
warm.
Posted: Mon - November 24, 2003 at 04:50 PM