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Remembering Snowmaggedon

Remembering Snowmaggedon

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Five years ago today the first flakes flew in a storm called Snowmaggedon, which dumped close to three feet of snow here before it was done.  It was, next to a couple of rough Chicago winters, the most snow I had ever seen. It closed schools and offices and slowed life to a pioneer pace. It spurned removal; some neighborhoods weren’t plowed for a week.

Though grocery shelves were empty and some folks were climbing the walls by the time it was over, it was for me — and for many — the pause button I’d been waiting for.

There were long lazy hours for reading and writing, for making soup and baking rolls. Time for walking down the middle of a busy road because it was impassable for cars.  Time to start this blog.

It was, in short, the world upside down and white. Will it happen again? Not this year, from the looks of it. But the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. We can always hope.

What’s On Our Minds

What’s On Our Minds

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On the radio. On the television. On weather websites.

 At home and at the office, too.

It’s what we talk about, think about, speculate about.

Maybe it will happen. Maybe it won’t.

I’m leaning toward the latter these days.

Step Lively

Step Lively

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When bitter winds howl in from the west, when temperatures dip into the teens, when the sidewalk harbors little patches of black ice and there’s a quarter-mile of pavement between me and the next warm building, this is what I do. Step lively.

It’s what some Metro conductors suggest. “Step lively,” they say. “Doors closing.”

It’s what race-walkers do, with a bounce in their gait and a swivel of their hips.

Step lively, with its whiff of the nautical, its sprightliness and energy and pep.

Step lively. It’s more hop than saunter, more snap than sizzle. It’s quaint and practical and fun.

Step lively. It’s a good way to get through winter.

Time for Sun

Time for Sun

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What a difference the sun makes. It’s cold, slightly above freezing, a steady breeze blowing off the lake. But the day is friendly, not the alien weather of yesterday, which was inhospitable to humans.

I say this from experience, after first rambling along the shore and then trudging up to the ridge, where the combination of exertion and distance from the lake made the temperature almost bearable.

Today there are sounds of life, some hammering next door, an occasional car engine. It’s time for me to go outside — if for no other reason than to know how good it feels to come back in! 

Rain Power

Rain Power

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I don’t love the rain but I do appreciate its force and manner, the way it reminds us of elemental things, of topography, for instance.

My neighborhood is laced with the tributaries of Little Difficult Run, and when showers are heavy these timid trickles become raging torrents. I’ve seen bridges lifted off their moorings and deposited downstream. I’ve seen small lakes form as creeks flood their banks and become rivers. I’ve seen trees topple, their roots torn from rain-loosened soil.

Today’s deluge is not enough for that. But it’s enough to make me remember.

(Before the storm.)

Late Summer

Late Summer

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Here we are in the dog days of … September?  I’ve always counted early September weather as the most reliably pleasant of the year (blue skies, low humidity, plenty of sunshine).

This year quite the opposite. It will be 94 today. The air conditioning, mostly off all summer, finally has a chance to flex its muscles. We had September weather in July; now we’re having July weather in September.

I’m glad for this sticky heat that makes me long for fall. Late summer in more ways than one.

Where the Rain Begins

Where the Rain Begins

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Last evening, after a long day at the office, I was sitting in the car waiting to turn left from the park and ride lot when I saw the rain begin. It was less than 50 away from me. I could see it sheeting the cars paused on the other side of the light but it hadn’t yet reached me.

At first it was like that infinite pause between when you cut your finger and you start to feel the pain from the cut — there’s often a lag there. On the other hand, there was a fellow-feeling with those cars drenched before mine, a sympathetic pain, almost flinching from rain that was not yet there.

Then I watched the rain advance across the pavement, fat drop by fat drop until finally it was pounding, pouring, a deluge.

I drove the two miles home with the wipers on full blast, and then, by the time I pulled in the driveway, it had almost stopped again.

I love the mercurial weather of summer, its flightiness, its lack of steady intentions.

And last night I loved watching the rain begin.

Drenched Garden

Drenched Garden

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Spongy mulch, dripping ferns, glistening flowers.

The summer garden got a good soaking yesterday, and this morning it is renewed, refreshed, restored.

I’m still thinking about the tropical gardens, though, the orchids and bromeliads, how they draw their sustenance from rainfall cupped and gathered, how they use it to make food.

Plants of the air, plants of the earth — water common to both.

Blackberry Winter

Blackberry Winter

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I grew up with this expression, used to describe a patch of cool summer weather. I’ve been thinking about it the last few mornings waking to temperatures in the high 50s — in July!

“A colloquial expression used in the south and midwest North America referring to a cold snap that occurs in late spring when the blackberries are in bloom,” Wikipedia says.

That’s not the way I remember it. Late-spring cold was dogwood winter. Mid-summer cold was blackberry winter. The time when blackberries were in fruit — not in flower.

Doesn’t matter. Both are lovely ways to talk about unseasonable chill. Poetic descriptions of essential contradictions. 

And the blackberries are in fruit and ready for picking. I see them along side roads and fence rows, in what remains of the meadow. They should peak this weekend.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Land Between Storms

Land Between Storms

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Driving home yesterday, dashing through puddles left from an earlier shower, racing to reach the house before the skies opened for another deluge, I thought about where I was. It was an interval of time, true, but it was also a place. The Land between Storms. The terrain: Steaming pavement, black clouds, a feel in the air that was part peace and part anticipation.

How many other times are places? The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the last week of May. But these are fixed in time, not mobile like the Land Between Storms.

There is also the place that springs up after a blizzard. A world of white — silent for an hour or two then filled with the sound of snowblowers whirring and shovels scraping.

It has taken me a long while to realize the commonality of these experiences, how they pull together sights, sounds and smells so reliably, so ineluctably, that I can find the places every time.