I took that picture.
Farm Karin’s dad’s horse, AJ. He was sassy and I wanted him so badly.
But, in no way did I have enough experience to give him the life he deserved nor the training he needed.
I still enjoyed him in the time I knew him. And that is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.
To take said picture, I had to drive down Prospect side road in a snow storm. A month prior I had made the same drive and flipped a jeep into the swamp. My first car wreck. The road was pure ice and all peaks and valleys and super narrow. I came down a hill too fast, fishtailed and lost control. I think now, in retrospect I either hit the brake too hard, or accidentally the gas. No way of knowing. I just know I fucked up.
I remember being terrified to take that same road, in yet another blizzard.
But I did it.
The universe rewarded my bravery with some really gorgeous pictures and a few hours of playing ball with an amazing horse. And that feeling of “I was scared, but I did it anyways”.
I have fallen into a common Canadian winter mind trap.
A tease, but not quite a lie.
The myth of +1.
Those who make the long range forecasts always throw in a +1 C far enough ahead in the forecast to give us hope. Sometimes it comes, more often than not it gets pushed forward a week until finally, in March something breaks.
Once every few years we get a balmy day or 2 in February followed by a colossal dump of snow.
But eventually winter ends and the joy of summer returns. And maybe if we didn’t have the deep freezes, shin deep snow, and the darkness of winter as a comparison, June, July and August wouldn’t be so sweet.
If I ever look back on this article, mayhap I can remind myself that this too shall pass.
But we have been in a deep freeze for about a week now, and weather patterns that have been patterns for my entire life are changing rapidly.
I find myself in a constant state of ‘let’s just get through today’, ‘one more day’ or 2 or 5.
Or, as of the time of this article being published 144 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours and 19 minutes.
I know we aren’t going to vote our way out of this, but it is something to hold onto for now.
Last night/this morning was supposed to be the worst of it and Monday is supposed to be a balmy -1. -2 now, but who is counting.
It’s been the end of January for about 84 years now.
And the snow just keeps falling.
I flagged down a dude with a truck and a plow last week and bribed him with my last $40 in cash to dig out our back parking lot. Took him 5 minutes, would have taken me hours. Worth it.
It dropped from -18 to -22 last night. I had to work yesterday and every atom in me was screaming, “go home, make soup, keep the animals warm, light candles, make tea and hibernate.” But instead I was planning events and counting chafers.
Somewhere deep down in my peasant DNA there is the voice of my ancestors screaming at me to survive this.
Or maybe it’s Laura Ingalls.
I read the entirety of the Little House on the Prairie series hundreds of times as a kid. I still have the OG copies my mom gave me that were hers.
She wrote prolifically about the winters she survived. Dedicated an entire book to one specifically extra ultra mega bad one.
Grinding wheat in a coffee grinder to make bread when they ran out of food. Twisting hay and straw into tight bundles to burn when they ran out of firewood. Digging a tunnel between the house and the barn to tend to the animals. And finally, eventually, one day the winter broke and the train that had been delayed for months arrived.
So honestly. This isn’t that bad. The kittens and I are warm. We have food, I made sure of that. And the car still runs. Begrudgingly, but it runs.
My son works for the football operations side of things at the same stadium as me. He worked yesterday too, and his team was stuck outside clearing the snow that won’t stop falling. I made sure there was hot coffee and soup for my family. Perks of being in food and beverage.
All of the pipes have burst on the east side of the stadium and we have a championship game on Tuesday.
I know this too shall pass.
All of it.
I have been here before.
We had a bad cold snap and about 3 feet of snow fell overnight last year. I had to dig a maze through the snow in the backyard for Alice. But it didn’t last long. Melted within a week and made going for walks through the rivers of run off and melt really hard. She wasn’t walking far by then. And the poop maze was a blessing, she lost her balance often and instead of totally wiping out, the snow banks held her upright.
Last winter was one of the worst for me. Alice had a stroke, my boss died, I got insanely sick and there were microscopic bugs in my apartment chewing the shit out of my legs and torso. Never did figure out what was biting me.
Alice fell off the bed one night and hurt herself really badly, so the bed went on the floor.
I originally thought I had bed bugs so I tossed the couch, and her and I ended up on an Ikea mattress on the floor in the living room. Me playing games on my phone and making jewelry. Doing anything to keep busy while being as close to her as possible, while she just got sicker and sicker. Our whole life was a vigil propped up on pillows and blanket nests for 100 days.
This January has also been a bitch.
But isn’t that just January?
-30 C when Giant barbequed me steaks on our first date and the sound the snow made under the cute boots I wore instead of being practical. 2015 was it? 2014? He left a week later. I was crushed.
The ice storm of 2013 and the fallout thereof.
Burst pipe in the basement of Milton house, but at least it was hot water and the floor actually needed a deep clean. Maybe not 2 inches of water over 900 square feet, but at least the floor sloped to the east and it didn’t reach the hardwood.
The multiple vortexes/vortices at Milton house wherein I ran out of firewood to keep us warm that first winter. I had a customer who would cut up hardwood pallets on his breaks at work and fill my trunk and back seat with banana boxes packed with burnable chunks of wood.
It got me through.
8 bush cords and about 100 boxes of ingenuity and kindness.
I still have one piece. A reminder that I am capable of doing hard things.
I have one incredibly vivid memory of that year. I went into town to run errands. It must have been the beginning of March, snow still falling intermittently and Mama Nature still throwing fits of cold after the deep freeze. I had a coffee and somehow a Marlboro cigarette, maybe the last of the ones I brought back from Arizona. The sun was shining, it wasn’t particularly warm out. But you know those brief moments where the sun touches your skin after a prolonged period of grey skies and you can remember what it feels like to be warm, and that spring is real. I opened the car door and the inside was actually hot.
I just sat for a few minutes and my optimism came off of me in waves.
I think that has been what is missing these days.
Any kind of optimism about anything.
Life is expensive and terrible. I had an event at work last Saturday. 60th birthday party for a gentleman with Downs Syndrome. It should have been sweet and fun, and it was for them.
But I made the mistake of opening my phone and they shot Alex Pretti in the back and I spent the rest of the day terrified for humanity in general, but mostly the pink coat lady. I had to excuse myself and I cried in the elevator on the way down for a cigarette. Eyes and chest burning form trying to hold in the kind of sobs that shouldn’t be sobbed at work.
I think herein lies my problem with getting back into this writing thing.
None of this matters.
Life is just one big cortisol spike after another.
For a few minutes here and there I can forget about the terrors. If I write things down I can remember lying in bed next to Giant listening to Postcard from 1952 with a belly full of steak and whiskey.
Or the sounds of the trees exploding in Milton from the cold and ice while I fed chunks of fragrant wood into the fireplaces and Alice was still alive.
The sense of accomplishment that comes with traversing snow covered highways and side roads. Trips that would take 2 hours in the clear turning into 5 or 6 hour tours, tucked in behind transport trucks and plows creeping at 40km/hr just trying to get where I was going. And the relief of bare roads.
The journey from New Brunswick to the ferry when I spent 11 hours holding the wheel to keep my tires in the ruts left behind by truckers and just praying I would make it on time. I did.
If I go further back I can remember being wrapped in blankets in my childhood bedroom closet, in the cubby I had made with a little lamp and a pillow nest, reading the Long Winter by Laura Ingalls.
Dark winter mornings, eating my mom’s oatmeal and listening for the announcement that buses had been canceled. Childhood joy, hot chocolate and sledding with the neighbor kids on snow days.
Maybe we will get back there. Recessions and wars end. The dust bowl eventually became fertile farmland again. Evil men die or go to prison. Systems fail and spring will come eventually.
All we can do is stay vigilant, fight the good fight and allow ourselves some nostalgia for when things were better, and some hope that they will be again.