No Mo’ Sno’

 

You know that snowfall I reported a post or two ago? Well, it kept snowing. And snowing. And snowing, until 35 centimetres had landed on the south island and everything froze in place. No last minute prezzie shopping, no grocery shopping, no visiting, no departing upstairs neighbours. Nothing. The rest of Canada has every right to thumb their noses at us, but that doesn’t make the stress any less stressful for people accustomed to green Christmases.

My snowmance extends to fantasies of being snowed in, of the aforementioned hot tea, fat novels and cozy blankets. The truth is far less enchanting. The truth is even I get cabin fever. It’s not that I would go out, it’s that ability to choose whether or not to go out. Being snowed in negates that agency.

Oh, Ter and I did suit up and venture out the next day. We assessed the Tiguan situation, shovelling off as much of the snow as we could to prevent him from freezing solid when the melt came (it has yet to start). Mercifully, the snow was still light and powdery, and we managed to dust off the hood, windshield and windows, but digging out was too much for two babes in their sixties. Besides, if we’d been able to clear a path to the road, the road itself was impassable.

In a bizarre way, it was fun to be out in bright sun and knee-high snow, working with my proton to move the white stuff around. It felt like we’d accomplished something when we finally came indoors to thaw ourselves out. It’s important to feel empowered in such situations, because it’s hard to stay positive when the challenge continues beyond a day or two, especially as Christmas Day creeps ever closer and there are still things to be done.

I can’t imagine the strain on parents of little kids. How do you explain to a six year old who believes in magic that Santa couldn’t get his sleigh out of the driveway? Yup. I am luckier than most in these Currier and Ives conditions. Perhaps it’s a recognition of how overwhelming life has lately been that my loving friendly and generous Universe has blessed me with a puny-by-comparison set of args this Christmas. I’m warm, I’m safe, I’m fed, so quit whining, Ru.

I submit that it’s all relative. A few days of “severe by west coast standards” snow is hardly a life or death event, but Christmas has taken an odd turn in past years and this was the first holiday season since Mum died that looked promising. I’ve become woefully nostalgic for Christmases past, which in itself is different, if not understandable in the circumstances.

Ter and I used to go all out during the holidays, and while I’m sure we griped and got stressed at the time, I only remember the joy. The tradition. Filling the advent calendar with Quality Street chocolates. Dashing out to pick up sock stuffers during lunch breaks. Shopping trips on weeknights when the stores are less crowded. Baking a ton of cookies. Lavish Christmas teas with friends and family. Wrapping presents in elegant paper. My wee sister’s fabulous mincemeat tarts. Kicking back on Christmas Eve when all was said and done, sipping a ruby mimosa and watching Alistair Sim by the light of the “f***ing soap opera tree”, as a friend once called it. The Christmas Day phone call to my parents ahead of the Queen’s Message.

Everything has changed. My parents are gone. So is the Queen. Our beautiful Edwardian flat was traded for a ho-hum standard apartment. A global pandemic moved in, stayed for two years and never really departed. The world itself seems to have tilted further out of alignment. Indeed, why should Christmas have survived intact?

You have to laugh at the irony. Imagine, Christmas being called on account of snow.

Merry, merry anyway. With love,

Snow Daze

 

It’s snowing. I’m in my room writing about it, reminiscing about Christmases past when the only seasonal white stuff was the whipped cream on Mum’s Boxing Day trifle, or recalling one winter day when I stood with my father in the living room and watched a rare flurry outside the window.

I said, “Isn’t it pretty?”

Dad growled, “I hate snow.”

It’s definitely different when you don’t have to operate in it.

I remember some winters when Mum would do a massive grocery shopping in response to a menacing forecast. Once the kitchen was fully stocked, she would come into the living room and announce, “Now it can snow.” We’d all breathe a sigh of relief, knowing hearty soups and fresh-baked baps were in the works no matter how frightful was the weather outside.

These days, even on the west coast, snow seems an annual inevitability. I don’t remember a recent winter without it; in fact, a major snowfall in the Before Time prompted the Powers That Be to order laptops for all staff during the computer refresh (admin staff typically received desktops) so we could work from home on heavy snow days. The computers were also outfitted with VPN access, and whatever technology was required to keep the system from crashing was boosted to avoid a network catastrophe. (I wonder if our directors had a communal premonition, as it sure came in handy when COVID hit.)

Used to be that snow fell in January or February. Now it seems bent on wrecking Christmas, or at least one’s Christmas vacation, by dumping before festive preparations are complete. This year, the first round fell on November 7, followed almost exactly two weeks later by a second round. I now have a strategy to outwit the winter by either picking up my computer—my rig is left at the office on weekends so it gets its updates on schedule—or keeping it at home if it snows later in the week. It’s much less stressful to be on vacation, though today’s snowfall is interfering with last minute Christmas shopping; not mine, but everyone else’s, and that’s an extra stress on people already teetering on the edge.

My snowmance continues, however, with images of hot tea, fat novels and cozy blankets. Ter suffers more, being prone to cabin fever long before I get restless. She’s never actually declared a loathing for it, but a snow advisory can rattle her until she’s able to restock the pantry. Then she emerges from the kitchen to announce, “Now, it can snow.”

“Snow Dance”

The sky thickened like pudding, clear and watery to start, gradually deepening until the colour was obscured by cloud. Ominous cloud. Scowling, gun metal grey cloud, loaded with menace and threatening Armageddon.

The first flakes were pellets no bigger than Styrofoam crumbs, and so sporadic that you couldn’t be sure they were real as they skittered at eye level past the window.

My rose tea latte was perfect, black and half-sweet, blistering hot under four inches of foam. Using a plastic plug in lieu of a spoon, I savoured the mousse while watching the snow pellets blossom into flakes, some joining forces to create frozen flowers, others flying solo, smaller but no less troublesome once their numbers increased. The line up at the counter lengthened accordingly as people streamed in, thinking to wait out the worst over coffee or at least get it to go and beat the blizzard home.

Snow has a funny way of falling. Some flakes float straight toward the ground. Others zip by at an angle, driven hard with no set destination. Still others dance like fairies in the wind, flitting back and forth, up and down; crystalline butterflies sketching zigzag paths against the winter sky. It’s quite simply beautiful. It’s even more beautiful with a hot drink, a warm scarf, and soft jazz playing in the background.

I take forty minutes to empty a medium cup. In the space of those minutes, the world went from bright and sunny to blazing white to the damp, dismal grey customary of February on the west coast. The crazy snow fell but didn’t stick. Like my half sweet black rose latte, it was just enough to be enjoyed without regrettable repercussions down the road.

That’s why I live here.

* * *

It's been a while since I've done a writing exercise. A little artistic embellishment here, but basically this was how my Sunday morning went.

Snow What?

photo courtesy of Ter

I am a snowmantic. I love the idea of snow. A pristine blanket of sparkling white, evergreens draped in a thick layer of frosting or a cityscape glazed in royal icing—any or all of these images will excite my creativity and set me to fantasizing. I am often inspired to write snowy scenes. I adore the mental images of winter furs and dappled grey horses in a black and white wood. More compelling is the comfort of a scene in a cafe, of Christmas shoppers taking refuge from the weather over steaming eggnog lattes or peppermint hot chocolate.

Snow at night is even better than snow in sun—it’s a joy to be bundled in your jammies or wrapped in an oversized sweater, cradling a mug of spiced apple cider or sweet milky tea while snow falls thick and soft outside the window. Creating the mystical glow that brightens the dark and makes the stars seem sharper in the sky.

The crunch of your boots breaking the crust on that first foray outdoors. The bracing scent of Arctic cold and the shock of it reaching your lungs. Skating outdoors on a frozen pond. Slinging your skates over your shoulder and hiking home in deep drifts of snow. (Okay, I’ve never done that, but Ter did when she lived in Alberta.) Brightly coloured parkas and Nordic patterned mittens, striped scarves and tasselled toques, sleds and toboggans and snowball fights in the schoolyard.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

What I tend to forget is ... snow is cold. It is usually accompanied by a colder wind. It might be fun as it gathers on your hood, but once inside the drugstore where you’ve trudged to get batteries for the flashlight in case the power cuts out, don’t lower your head or melted snow will pee all over your summer sneaks because this is Victoria and who needs winter boots out west?

Chances are, a pair of good ones won’t pay themselves off because it’s so rare, but when snow does arrive in the Garden City, it is not the snow you knew when you were a kid in Alberta or Quebec. It is wet, heavy, slippery, stubborn snow with a mercifully short shelf life but a brutally obstreperous nature. It melts fast and freezes solid. Walking an icy sidewalk becomes an extreme sport unless you have cleats. Driving is okay if you have proper tires (Tiggy’s were upgraded to all weather from all season last year) and no one else is on the road, otherwise it’s demo derby on the highways and byways. As little as two centimetres will stress us out and shut us down.

I had the idea for this post before the winter hit us last week. We only endured a few days of light-by-Canadian-standard snowfall, but it was rougher than it was a pleasure and all I can say with any certainty is our plan for retiring to Canmore has been relegated to the Hall of Doof Ideas.

Merry Christmas.

Blustery Days

My earliest memory of hella high winds formed when I was about five years old. I was in kindergarten in Sorel, at a school that was, I believe, walking distance from home.

I don’t remember much about kindergarten except that I didn’t like it. It was new and strange, and full of kids who spoke French when I was the only one who didn’t. I don’t know if I lasted the full term, or if my folks pulled me out after I pitched a four alarm tan-tan in the driveway one day; so much of that time in my life is long gone but for the dramas that tend to stay with a person well into adulthood. Allowing for said dramas to become exaggerated over time, I have a clear sense of losing my mind one day, and my mother telling the kind folks who had come to pick me up to go on their way. I don’t remember anything more than that, but if Mum does, I bet the story’s as embarrassing as the one she likes to tell about the day I first saw snow.

I digress.

While I was still in kindergarten, I remember stepping from the school into bright sun and big wind. The leaves were doing their swirly dance on the sidewalk and skittering into the street. I was wearing my plush green winter coat, which was heavy enough to keep my feet on the ground when the wind tried to lift me off them. It was so strong when it hit me that it felt like a big hand curling around my legs. It tugged so insistently that I was sure I’d achieve liftoff like Piglet in the stories by AA Milne—to this day, on a big windy one, I’ll generally ask of no one in particular, “Can I fly Piglet next?”

Fast forward to November 2015. Ter and I had ventured out to do some Christmas shopping and the wind was so strong when we got home that folks were parking on Dallas Road to watch the ocean pound against the shore. I love a stormy ocean, and while I normally watch it from the shelter of my living room, this time, I couldn’t resist. “I have to go look,” I told Ter, and promptly left her to struggle with the shopping bags while I headed up to street level.

Our street sits a bit lower than the main road. How much lower became evident when I reached the top of the slope and was struck full in the face by a blast of salt spray—and this before I got across the road. I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed over to join the other nut cases hanging out by the railing.

Wind roaring. Surf crashing. Gulls hanging overhead. Kids in their twenties spreading their wings and leaning into the teeth of it, letting the wind hold them upright. Small dogs being carried because otherwise they’d be airborne. My vision immediately obscured by the spray on my glasses. The sheer force of the wind felt like that long-ago hand trying to push me back into traffic, shoving so hard that it seemed almost enraged. I fought back, kept my feet, staggered a few steps along the sidewalk. You can’t breathe in wind that strong; it jams itself down your throat and stays there. And all the while, you are reminded of how fragile, how mortal, you are against this heaving, howling, living entity.

Jesu Maria. Get me out of this.

With the wind helping me along, I trip-and-a-trip-trip-tripped back toward home, where Ter had managed to secure the Tiguan by the curb and wrestle our loot into the house. “Well?” she asked from the top of the stairs. “How was it?”

“One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” I replied, gasping.

“Yah,” she said, “while I was trying to drop the hatch on Tiggy, the wind swooped in and snatched one of the empty grocery bags. The last I saw, it was zipping toward Moss Rock Park.”

I could very easily have gone the same route.

Last week, the west coast was treated to a hat trick of storms over three days, ending with the remains of Typhoon Songda predicted to be the most intense of the trio. Once again, folks pulled over to watch the ocean do its thing. Ter parked Tiggy behind the house for the third act, as did most of the neighbours. The street out front was empty that night. The wind ramped up for a bit of a show before dinner, then died back by eight and never really took off.

I didn’t even try to go outside.

Reach Up for the Sunrise

Much as I love the fall, I am no fan of getting up before the sun. Hauling the compostable container from my toasty comfy bed to shuffle down a cold dark hallway, flipping on lights as I go, seems to get harder with each successive weekday morning.

We are now past the fall equinox. The sun rises almost an hour after I do, and about twenty minutes before Ter and I leave for work. On a clear morning, I eat my breakfast while watching a spectacular show. On a clear morning, I watch the sun rise from the Ocean Room window.

It’s a remarkable thing when the gold spark winks above the horizon. Time stops. An unexpected serenity settles over me. I stand transfixed in a gradually spreading pool of warm toffee light. Every cell in my being leans toward it. I unfold like a flower. I raise my arms as if to embrace the glory and bring it to my heart. On a good day, I carry it with me. On a not-so-good day, I cherish the moment and head out the door only to pause on the front stoop and marvel once more at the gift of living across the street from a daily miracle.

The sun doesn’t hurry. It comes on its own schedule, with a majesty unparalleled by any other natural phenomenon, and it happens every single day. People complain about the rain and cloud and fog and cold, and every time I say to them, “The sun is up there; you just can’t see it.”

I get a lot of funny looks, but I also get some smiles.

Almost every culture and society throughout history has associated the sun with their most powerful deity. Being a night owl, I haven’t always understood the attraction. I used to enjoy the sunset more, simply because a different kind of magic—my kind of magic—occurs after the light fades and the noisy, bustling, chaotic world goes to sleep. I used to stay up and write all night, and man, I produced a ton of stuff. I plan to do it again, once I retire from my daytime gig. I love the night. For me, it’s the most mysterious and creative and expansive time of the 24 hour cycle, and if I could stay awake past nine p.m., I’d have that darned novel in the can and be two more ahead!

Until then, however … “Sun, sun, sun, here it comes …”

Sunlight and Rain

“Help me to be in the world for no purpose at all except for the joy of sunlight and rain.”

                                                                                                                                   - Tom Hennen

There’s that word again. Contrast.

We rainforest dwellers gripe about the rain. Then, when the lakes dry up and the grass turns brown, we gripe about the sun. Too much of one makes us grateful for the other … until we get too much of that other. Gratitude inevitably devolves into griping and the cycle begins again.

I am certainly not exempt from whining. It’s hard to sustain one’s appreciation for too much of anything, especially in the weather department.

It’s a cool, showery weekend, and I am loving it. Sunlight sharpens the lines and punches up the colours, but green assumes a different hue beneath a cloudy sky. Shadows grow soft and mysterious. The ocean turns pewter, shimmering rather than sparkling under a muted sun. Rainfall whispers in the night outside my window, and tea becomes a warm comfort rather than an iced relief. I actually put on my fuzzy socks, last night, and I reveled in them!

With hot sun all week and the shift in the forecast happening on Friday, it would have been typical to grouch with my co-workers about rain on the weekend, but nobody is complaining … yet. Give us a few days of granite cloud and wet pavement and we’ll be complaining again.

Without one extreme, we have no appreciation for the other.

That about says it all, doesn’t it?

Burning the Ground

The world is on fire. The entire west coast is burning so hot that the sky over Victoria is thick and jaundiced with smoke. You can almost smell it. The photo I took on the weekend looks like it was tinted sepia. It wasn’t.

It’s unsettling, the colour of chaos. BC is burning in some areas, flash-flooding in others. If only we could direct the water toward the fire sites, one might find some divine providence in it all. This early in the season and the wildfire budget (how the heck can you budget for disaster?) is already exhausted. The fire crews on the ground and finance folks waiting to pay the bills are or will soon be equally so.

The glorious spring we enjoyed has morphed into the summer from hell. Drought conditions create rock-hard soil so when the rainstorms come, the water bounces off the ground and rushes straight through people’s basements. Intense dry lightning sparks new forest fires almost daily. Rising night winds whip the flames to the point where they create their own wind and start crowning—that’s jumping from treetop to treetop, folks—and the dry brush underfoot, the wreckage from pine beetle infestation and heedless foresting practices, ignites to meet in the middle.

It’s not just in BC, either. If the prairies aren’t battling tornadoes and thunderheads with hail the size of golf balls, they’re on fire too. Fire crews in the US are fighting as hard as ours to hold off hungry flames with yummy homes and vacation cottages in their sights. Hundreds—thousands?—of people are evacuated with a half-hour’s notice and nothing but what they can stuff into their cars. Lives may not be lost, but they could be irrevocably changed.

I heard that a little earthquake recently rattled Nova Scotia (?!) I’m sitting in a subduction zone where, when that one plate shifts, Abbotsford will become waterfront property, and I’m getting a little nervous. “Mother Earth is waking up,” Ter said the other day, “and she is pissed.”

Her comment got me thinking. If Mother Earth had been Father Earth instead, would we have treated her with more respect?

A Turning Season

Fall arrived at 7:29 last night. I went downstairs at 7:15 and spent a few minutes in the garden, inhaling the last breath of summer. The air was muggy yet smelled of wood smoke, the quintessential autumn scent. The big mystery tree out back has been dropping leaves for weeks now, crispy brown things that crunch like potato chips beneath my feet, but the flowers persist in colourful defiance.

I still see roses in bloom. Not many, but most definitely roses. We have a painting by Trisha Romance called “September Rose”; I think of it every time I walk past a garden that smells of Turkish delight..

My whites have been retired, but the pastel tees are still in play. Normally, at this time of year, I’m either underdressed for the morning or overdressed for the afternoon and a jacket is worn on the way to work but draped over my arm on the way home. This month has been unseasonably warm for Victoria—which was good for my niece’s bridal shower last weekend. You need good weather for a garden party and, miraculously, the weather obliged in spades.

Can’t say the same for Calgary—they had 30 cms of snow the week after Labour Day. The grounds crew at Spruce Meadows barely managed to clear the ring in time for the annual Masters tournament; if Ter and I had considered driving out to see the horses this year, we’d have stroked out over the weather beforehand.

The forecast this week is unsettled. Fall is definitely elbowing summer aside, but summer is fighting it. I don’t know why. It’ll be back next year.

Won’t it?

The Importance of Tea (Part VI)

“Safetea”

The first day of autumn blew in on a strong wind complete with rain and a stormy sea. It also coincided with the Tour de Victoria, which happened to roll past my window en route, one hopes, to someplace warm and dry. At midday it occurred to me that I was missing an opportunity to see a bunch of crazy people cycle by, so I carried my tea tumbler full of Persian Apple to the Ocean Room and settled on the sofa to watch the race for a bit.

I love wild water. The sea at its feistiest is a momentous sight. Grey-green waves laced with foam, pounding the beach right across the street. Rain coming sideways, driven by the same wind that has the trees dancing to its music. Part of me yearns to go out in it, to experience firsthand the smells, the sounds, the sights of Nature doing her darndest to remind us that, ultimately, she rules and we’ll just have to work with it.

Problem is, much as I long to stand in the teeth of it, those teeth are cold, wet and sharp. Only a fool would willingly succumb to that longing. Or, in the case of racing cyclists, a number of fools.

Nope, a sensible person curls up in a warm room with a steady supply of tea on the steep and watches the show from a safe haven.

Yes, I am immensely grateful that I have that warm, safe haven. I can afford to rhapsodize about stormy weather because I have the good fortune to be sheltered from it.

The vibe indoors was no doubt influenced by the energy outdoors; I had real trouble wanting to write, let alone knowing what to write. I spent most of the morning reading over things, trying to get a bead on something that would trickle into flow. I get rattled and restless when the wind is up – a reminder that I, too, am a creature of Nature and susceptible to the same energy patterns as everything else on the planet. It’s a harder fight on that sort of day, to be content, to be creative, even to be optimistic. So it was good for me to take my tea into the OR and observe the conditions from a happy place. It made me grateful and even a bit creative, ’cause that’s when I saw the paradox of heinous outside, peaceful inside, and the importance of tea in the situation. I grabbed the Canon, set up the shot and hit the button.

Instant post.

Life is good.