winter when it wallops

by bam

oh, Winter your wilds are furious. you’ve pulled out all the verbs from the far end of the dictionary: gusting, icing, blinding, hurling. the ones marked “extreme.” and i, for one, am reveling. sitting here with nose pressed against window, marveling that this ol’ globe can still order up a duster of snow and wind and ice. and howl. oh, the howling here in my little wedge of world.

it’s a potage of white out there. gray and white and swirl.

when you grow up in these parts, you need a little snow boot to punctuate your season. heck, i grew up knowing the feel of snow around my knees. trying to lift my snowy clods as if through moon dust, wondering just how far i’d make it till my little heart pounded so extreme i’d have to pause to keep from keeling.

it’s falling now in fat flakes. flakes the size of manna from heaven, i’d imagine, if you imagined manna something like the wonder bread of our youth torn in fist-sized bits, which was something like the way some nun once described it, and for me the picture stuck, which is why when i read exodus i picture all the ancient israelites scrambling about the sinai gathering up their gobs of wonder bits.

but back to winter: the alarms are pinging wildly into my laptop. schools closed. roads a danger trap. all the planes now grounded at o’hare, once the world’s busiest airport except for when the wilds of winter are unleashed.

someone clearly opened the winter barn door deep in the night. and the winds now gallop. and if only i weren’t afraid of skidding to the ground, i’d be out there taking in a full-throttle dose of all this wintry wonder, the season that reminds you what you’re made of.

winter reminds us we’re not the ones in charge here. oh, sure, many a day it’s us and our to-do lists, those are the hills we’re meant to climb. but then the weather gods step in, decide to put us in our little place. show us just how wild the elements can whirl and hurl and turn things upside down.

with all the poisons swirling in the air, i’m all in for a world that puts us in our place. reminds us we’re not quite in charge. not remotely. i like a little climatological force put up against our feeble mortal ways.

my prescriptives on a day like this begin and end with keeping watch: i’ll let the day unfold in its extremes. watch the boughs bend low, as they bear the weight of snow and more snow. pray the old house doesn’t groan too much (already the rafters are making monster noises). i’ve made a winter stew of all the old-time roots that once sustained the people of the prairie: turnip, parsnip, rutabaga. and a dab of beef for those who need their meats. i’ve my stack of tomes, fresh from a pre-storm raid of the library shelves. and i’ve got blankets at every bend in this old house.

most of all, i’ve got windowpanes on which to press my nose. and all of which give me front-row seat on the theater of winter, the one that makes me know just how vulnerable we are. and how wise we’d be to know we’re not in charge.

how do you prefer to spend your snow days?