11 December 20XX+1
My Dear Lucilius:
Day 3 of the Snowstorm
The constant snowfall has deadened somewhat from the previous two days to at least a manageable wash of snow which has paced itself to a slow, meandering fall punctuated by flurries. I cannot tell you the full amount it has dropped, my guess would easily be three feet or more.
The paths around the house have become gullies, passages between the greenhouse and outhouse and around the house. It has not been so bad during the day: every two hours or so I go out and stamp everything down and rake the roof. It has been enough that in the morning, there is a credible amount to clear, but not an impossible amount.
Apparently to counterbalance the declining snowfall, the wind has picked up.
You cannot imagine the wind on this snow. It howls and yowls and pushes the snow along as if it were piles of dust or pet hair driven by a fan inside a house. Seeing the it hurl the snow hither and yon, one begins to understand the fear of being caught alone in a snowstorm in the plains. Here it moves the snow back and forth, piling it up against side of The Cabin before pulling it away again. It remains the constant voice beyond the low murmur of the fire, a mocking and yet playful voice as it both brings the cold and makes the snow into vortexes and swirls.
Other than the in and out activity of making trails (which I begrudge every time I have to open the door and heat leaks out), there is not a great deal that can be done. Read. Watch the fire. Huddle under blankets. Drink tea.
Solitaire, Lucilius. I have played solitaire with a deck of cards for the first time in I cannot remember how long.
Sitting here in the encroaching darkness with nothing but the fire for light, I begin to appreciate how lonely the prairie must have been in Winter.
Your Obedient Servant, Seneca
Book-reading by firelight not the best time for that endeavor TB, conserving heat and firewood, tough in a prolonged snowstorm.
ReplyDeleteIt is not, Nylon12. There is the dull gray of daylight and they do have headlamps, but even then (given the Winter) recharging batteries is tricky at best.
DeleteThe heat conservation really had me thinking as I wrote this. In this particular case, both front door and stove are in the same room so inevitably there will be some kind of heat loss.
Living out on the "plains" wind and snow is a totally different experience. I would rather have three feet of snow and no wind versus three inches of a dry snow and a howling wind. Those three inches in the wind will create drifts as tall as I am across many of our roads and it would take days for the snow plows to clear it all again. Once when I was young, we got about 18 inches of snow and a howling wind and blew a 20 feet deep drift across the road at the end of our driveway. About five days later a bulldozer finally came down and punched a hole in the drift large enough for us and the school bus to go through. It was another week or two before the tunnel roof finally collapsed and we had to clear it with one of our tractors.
ReplyDeleteEd - Fascinating. This is what I might have thought it would be like.
DeleteYears ago when we drove through Wyoming and Montana during the Summer, they had sections of road which had structures designed to contain the snow at some level from drifts on the road. It has always stuck with me.
I'm happy my new home, Tennessee, is far enough south to miss out on that kind of storm, so far. We've had mild winters for a few years now, BUT, should (((They))) decide to diminish/punish, this conservative area, with weaponized weather, it would likely shut us down for a while.
ReplyDeleteT_M - There is (of course) a bit of imagining here, as this location can get this much snow (but not regularly or in one go). And it does not have to be a lot of snow either - snow in areas that are not equipped for it can shut down a location with as little as 6 inches in the right places.
DeleteGosh, TB, I feel cold and lonely just reading this.
ReplyDeleteLeigh - Wow! Then I got it right.
DeleteI have never been through a snowstorm like this ever; at best ones that have given 6" to 1" of snow. But having lived through recent events which effectively shut down civilization, it is easy to extrapolate.