This week... winter; next week... ?

The driveway is passable. The tractor starts but the diesel engine won’t keep running in -9℉ with a windchill of -28℉ so we used the gas snowblower. At the moment, we’re hoping that the increasing wind doesn’t drift in the drive or take out the electricity and that the tractor will start and run once the weather warms up next week. I find it incredible, but real, that a week from today the weather forecast includes rain. Climate breakdown and/or weirding has become the new normal I fear.

we think we have it tough?

Photo by J. Harrington

This afternoon we’re going to pretend we’re a couple of Santa’s elves and deliver a bunch of presents to the home of the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law and Granddaughter. Christmas is going to involve some juggling so we want as much flexibility as possible. Hence, early delivery unless we encounter roads the Jeep can’t handle due to snow cover. (One winter storm in Massachusetts, many years ago, the snow was deep enough to bring my F-150 4X4 to a halt by wedging under my front tires.)

There’s an old cowboy saying to the effect that there was “never a horse that couldn’t be rode, never a rider that couldn’t be throwed.” I’ve come to believe the same about vehicles and road conditions. Yesterday’s tv news had video of school buses tipped on their side after they slid off the road. I’m going to do my best to avoid doing that to and in the Jeep. Tomorrow’s winds may well drift closed a couple of roads we usually take to the kids’ house so today’s trip may be the better part of valor and we'll cross our fingers that all roads are drivable by Sunday.

We’re presently operating on the premise that we must survive in order to thrive. We’re also taking it one day at a time.

The Snow Man

By Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

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