It is winter in Massachusetts. It is cold in Massachusetts. It is, as my father would say, as cold as a mother-in-law's kiss. In fact I think I have seen a few Inuits huddled beneath furs muttering to themselves. If you leave a chicken in a car for two hours it will be frozen. Leave the house without warming the car beforehand and you will freeze before the heating can turn on. Windows won't wind down. Wipers refuse to budge. De-icing fluid freezes. You do not need skates to go skating - just step out your front door in any shoe that is not used by astronauts on the moon. Icicles hang from noses simply because people are breathing, lips are blue, eyebrows become rigid with ice, breath comes in gasps because it is COLD!
I love spring, summer makes me happy, autumn makes me a little frazzled as I think of what lies ahead but winter ... Let me put it like this:
Winter is cold, wet, icy, freezing, scary, dangerous, unpleasant, cruel, rime, frigid, hoarfrost and at the end of the day just damn awful. Sure it looks nice on a postcard, a Christmas card, in a photo handed to you while you lie next to the pool in 32 C weather with an iced drink beside you. It is not nice. It is not wonderful. It is not beautiful except when you are inside looking at the recent snow fall and some one else is shoveling, snow blowing, clearing, sanding your driveway. Driving in this weather is awful. You spend your time wondering if your brakes will work, if there is black ice on the road, trying to remember what to do if you get into a skid, wondering why the idiot behind you can not keep a sensible distance between you, looking around to see who is roaring up to intersections and might not be able to stop in time ... then there are all the other risks: snow banks collapsing in your path, truck drivers who roar around, unploughed roads, inadequately ploughed roads ... okay you get the picture.
Sure you can build snow men (never have), make snow angels (done it twice and really have no desire to do it again), throw snow balls (and end up covered in snow tossed back at you), trek through piles of snow pretending that you are having fun, ski (unless you will dislocate your knees), skate (ditto), ice fish (now there is a pass time that is surely only done in order to avoid domestic life) and all the other fun things that lovers of winter tell you are wonderful. These people, I assume, are all users of mind altering substances. Either that or they are aliens sent to earth because their own species considered them dangerous.
Winter has a few pluses: I enjoy fires, I like the excuse for hot chocolate (clearly had a Protestant upbringing) and I like ... well that is really all that I like about winter in NE. I have huge respect for all those people, indigenous and others, who survived the season without central heating, cars, quilted goose down coats, thermal underwear, libraries, radios, newspapers, books, grocery stores, television, movies, malls and so on. To think of having to get out of a bed and dress in subzero temps, cook on an open fire, collect wood, do washing by hand, raise kids, raise animals, hunt and all the other things that they did makes me shudder. They certainly deserve our respect. I have always wondered why mankind ventured outside of the bounds of the tropics. If they had been more like me I think mankind would have stayed well away from the temperate zones. I would have been sent over the hills to see what lay beyond and at the first chilly wind that ruffled my hair I would have sprinted back the way I had come to inform the others that there were huge, hairy fire breathing monsters who would eat us all should we ever go that way again. I would have been so convincing that my tribe would have sighed, picked up a coconut, cracked it open, passed it around and then taken a nap. We would have never invented writing, religion (perhaps a few friendly mate like gods who would chill out with us as we caught our dinner in the crystal ocean), no horses would have been domesticated, no other animals either. No medicine, no transport beyond shanks pony, no ... You can see why I would have saved the world from global warming.
But our ancestors did trek thousands of miles. They did brave the winters and the summers. They spread out across the earth. Their excuse might have been curiosity and a need for new territory. My excuse for coming to winter's home: rank stupidity! Even with lessons in geography, satellite images, photographs and descriptions of winter I failed to pay close attention. How bad can cold be? I thought in the warmth of southern Africa. Snow? How much snow can there really be?
Let me tell you snow up here is like dust in Arabia.
On the plus side there are wonderful trees, rivers, birds, wildlife, springs of exquisite beauty and summers that are perfect. So I suppose winter is the price we pay for all that comes after. I like to think that beneath the winter white lies all the colours of summer. But if you would like to swap places for a month, or two, and you live in the southern hemisphere drop me a line ...
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