Just Wait 15 Minutes
I’ve lived in the mountains and by the sea. I’ve visited warm places, cold places and the blissfully temperate ones. Everywhere I go, people lament the changeability of the weather. If you don’t like the weather, just wait 15 minutes… So I’m not very original when I post the above photo.
I posted it to Facebook for the amusement of my friends in this area, along with the caption, “And now our backyard snowman brings us the weather forecast for the Atlantic region…”
I live in a city by the Atlantic ocean, with a glimpse of the harbour from my bedroom window. When we get a dump of snow, inevitably it’s followed by rain, fog and a plunge in temperature. People shouldn’t have to shovel slush, it crushes the spirit. But if we don’t, it can freeze into several inches of stubborn ice (2014 still looms large in the memory of local meteorologists and traffic reporters).
This morning, as I chipped at the wall of slush/ice at the end of our driveway, I thought about addictions. My ice chipper is a wedge of metal on the end of a wooden stick. Every whack to the ice travels up the handle and into the muscles and joints of my hands. Afterwards, I know my thumbs will have a tremor in them and I’ll find it difficult to hold a pen. Naturally, the lower back suffers too. Chunks of wet ice hit my cheeks, narrowly missing my eyes. And yet, I can’t stop. It’s so satisfying, the slow progress of reclaiming that bit of driveway. The only way I’ll stop is through some form of intervention, such as someone removing the stick from my grasp and giving me a meaningful look. Even after the rain started I was out there, hunched like Gollum with my chipper. Behind me there was still so much heaving of slush to be done but with my 12 inches of bare concrete, I was happy. Thus, my progress was slow. If this is just a taste of the winter to come, I’d better save my strength.
Now it’s been hours. The temperature has continued climbing and the winds have picked up. Power outages are popping up everywhere. Steam is rising from the slush. The snowman is losing his shape, I’ve removed his apparel for now. The temperature is supposed to plunge well below freezing tonight. Our vehicles will be encased in ice. People will hate Monday even more than usual as they try to break into their own cars.
However.
Tomorrow morning, if I look hard enough with my camera, I’ll find some beauty in it; trees branching ornate crystals. Failing that, there’s bound to be humour. If not, I’ll wait fifteen minutes.
