Halloween.
This time last week, two days before Halloween, my housemate and I were out in the front yard with a ladder and broom knocking four inches of snow off of my small 30 foot sugar maple, which was still in full fall-colored leaf, before another two inches of the heavy white stuff could land. The whole eastern coast of the US, from the mid-Atlantic north, was covered in wet snow. When I opened the front door last Saturday morning, the maple's branches were trailing the ground and the snow showed no signs of letting up. My gut told me that the tree was big enough to sustain damage, and so I hastily threw a pair of sweats on under my night gown, yanked on my Uggs, tugged on my wool cap, zipped into my heavy winter coat, and slipped on my gloves. Unable to reach the top branches, we crossed our fingers that they were small enough and resilient enough to survive the snowfall yet to come. (Maple pictured right after our excursion, limbs still in partial droop.) It's likely our efforts were rewarded because all around town, maples of a similar size were later seen with one or more limbs helplessly dangling from their trunks.
By early afternoon the sun had melted all the snow off the trees and most of the driveway. The smaller maples around town must have snapped their branches in the couple hour window between our efforts to save the one in our front yard and the snow melting. All in all, unlike other less fortunate areas, we had a pretty easy time dealing with this out of season snowfall, losing power for only an hour due to fallen branches, and at least in our yard, with no deciduous trees larger than the maple, we had no debris to clean up.
Later in the day, I checked Facebook, looked at all the "isn't this weirdly beautiful" pictures posted by friends, and read comments regarding the most news worthy weather we've had since the recent and unusual earthquake that shook most of the coast. One friend in particular commented that she didn't mind the early snow "as long as it's not a sign of what's to come between now and April!" Talking smack about the weather... as if Mother Nature provides us with an opportunity to negotiate.
Naturally, this year's freak October storm reminded me of another freak October storm many years before and also of the sort of winter my friend is dreading. While I've seen it snow a few times when the leaves were still on the trees, this winter of fond memory was kicked off by an ice storm.
Back in the day before HDTV and seemingly unlimited cable channels, my housemates and I could not afford basic cable, and living as we did nestled between two mountain ranges, we could barely get the local TV station. So once a week, we paid homage to the big screen TV in our University's student lounge: us and about 30 other students. The most popular weekly show that kept us late at school once a week was Three's Company, a mid-season replacement the spring before. For us the show had particular meaning.
At a time when very few people lived with housemates of the opposite gender, my housemate Brenda and I found ourselves in the unenviable position of needing to find another roomer after school started. Our other housemate, a non-student artist, decided to move back home at the end of September, drawn as she was to free room and board. Pickings were slim, but we lucked out with Kenny, a transfer student. He had unwittingly moved into a boarding house on the corner of Gay and High Street, and as it turns out, all the other student boarders were gay men. Not that Kenny had a problem with that. As much as he enjoyed the house parties, as a straight man, living in a gay boarding house was hurting his social life. Everyone just assumed Kenny was gay, even the straight women who happened by.
You may remember that the plot of Three's Company hinged on the fact that Jack, a straight man, had to pretend he was gay so that his landlord would allow him to live with his two female housemates. The premise, though probably considered quaint today, was fitting for the time. My parents, people who would have strenuously objected to my having a male housemate in most normal circumstances, were relieved when we asked Kenny to live with us. Much to their dismay, Brenda and I lived in an old farmhouse with skeleton key locks situated in an isolated spot down a winding country lane miles from town. (Rented because the price was right.) My parents figured Kenny's presence offered us some element of protection.
On this particular October night, while we were in the middle of watching comedic misadventure, someone popped her head into the TV lounge and announced, "If you're driving, you need to leave NOW. We're having an ice storm and the roads are icing up. And if you're not driving, you might want to leave now because the sidewalks are icing up as well." By the time we donned our coats and made it outside, Brenda and I had to pick our way to the car and yet somehow managed to negotiate all the twists and turns to get safely home. Luckily, that particular ice storm caused little damage.
I don't remember when the first snow fell, but it was soon after the ice storm, which hastened the leaf drop. What I do remember is that from the first snow until the last, there was snow on our curvy road throughout the entire winter. And on the few isolated days here and there, where snow and ice was not making our road impassable to motorcycles, Kenny would ride his, and later that day it would snow. Every time. At some point in the winter, when Kenny suggested the road might be clear enough to ride the next day, we'd threatened him within an inch of his life, convinced as we were that his winter motorcycle riding was annoying the snow gods. Still, it would snow.
It snowed so much that local firewood providers could not get into to the mountains for dry wood and all that could be bought was green, and before long, we were out of the firewood I'd helped gather before school started. We heated with two old fashioned wood stoves, one of which we named Mae West because her round air vents were ineffectively located above the stove's door, and one gas stove. Green wood does not burn hot. So for most of the winter, with the gas turned down low (the farm house had no insulation and all three of us were paying our own way through school), we were dressed in our coats, hats, and gloves indoors and sitting as close as humanly possible to the wood stove (the gas stove gave off even less heat). In fact, I moved into the living room because with the green wood it became too difficult to keep the wood stove going in my bedroom. There I'd lay, trying to sleep, while Kenny sat eating his nightly snack of oranges and saltine crackers to the flicker of the fuzzy TV.
We had to block off the kitchen with an old quilt and leave the water dripping because there was no way to heat our huge country kitchen. Frozen food could be left on the counter without fear of it thawing. We became adept at eating out of cans and boxes that we stored in the dining room and treated ourselves to a hot school meal for lunch five days a week. The house was so very cold that we showered at the gym, and on a few different occasions for a few weeks at a time, the snow got so deep that the truck that delivered our water could not fill the tank, and so we moved in with other people. (There are many stories for another time buried within this winter's snowfall.) When we were able to "live" there that winter, there was hardly a day where we were not digging out our cars. If not for snow the night before, then for sliding into snow banks as we tried to pick up some speed on the small hill near our house. Needless to say, Kenny caught a ride with either me or Brenda or both of us--frequently we rode together in Brenda's heavier car--for all but a few days that very long, snowy winter.
Did the serious ice storm--the one that ruined so many trees, turned the wire fences into glass block, stranded us in our home for a couple of days, and left most of the city without power for a week--happen before or after the last snow? I cannot remember. After I think. Both were memorable.
The last snow, if I remember correctly, was in March. Spring break was coming up and my boyfriend and I were planning to hike Mary's Rock, a 3,514 foot peak, the eighth highest in the Shenandoah National Park, and camp for a several days. There was little snow on the ground and if we were lucky, it would almost be gone by the first day of spring break. On Saturday we awoke to about 12 inches of snow down in the Valley. We decided to take our trip anyway, even as the snow continued to fall. (I think our town got 18 inches that spring break.) As fellow students were basking in the sun in Florida, I was struggling to walk in my boyfriend's body print (forget foot prints... there were drifts up to my waist) in the middle of blizzard on Mary's Rock.
As snowy and cold as the winter was my senior year, the winter BEFORE was dryer than normal and unbelievably frigid for the Mid-Atlantic States. The winter of my junior year the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay froze over. The same year my key got stuck in the ignition of my rose pink 124 Special Fiat, causing me to have to jack up the hood and disconnect the coil every time I parked the car while I waited for a couple of weeks for a new ignition to arrive. With temperatures in the tens and a wind chill below zero, I'd be barehanded and futzing with the delicate little wires of the Fiat's coil while wind whipped around me.
When I think of my college years, I think of long, freezing cold winters. I think of the joy of actually acclimating to the cold: flannel shirts and parkas, wool hats, feet that only saw boots, fly away hair tackled with pigtails, and hot soup in the commuter lounge. I think of all the misadventures and hardships that turned into adventures I'd never want to forget. Perhaps it's just as well that Mother Nature doesn't allow us to negotiate the timing of storms or the amount of snowfall.
Whatever this winter season holds, and however long its grip, may your misadventures and hardships turn into memorable adventures that you'll never want to forget.
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