Making It Up As I Go Along #434

A change upcoming in my blog writing. My shift at work is changing again. I will post again next Sunday, as normal... but after that I’ll post on the following Saturday and, from that point on, back to how it was done last year (every eight days). So in this case, after I post on Saturday, October 9, the following post will be on Sunday, October 17, then Monday, October 25... and so on.

Adventure of Storms
I was snowbound once. Stuck within my home, unable to venture out. It didn’t last long. The length of a phone call really.

I was in St. John’s then...

This is the winter of all winters. Storm after storm. Literally. Over a two week period, we had seven blizzards. And they actually came every second day. It was the most organized pattern of weather I’ve seen.

Luckily for me this winter, I am not working. So when others have to try to maneuver ever narrowing streets, walled by icy snow... I hunker down in my loft with a lit wood stove and a cozy blanket.

I awake most mornings to the sound of shovels and scrapers. The working class preparing their cars. And after they’re all gone, I venture out to quiet streets. Mounds of snow climb the row houses. There’s nowhere else to go but up our walls. By the end, I go two and a half months with my living room window darkened by snow.

Another storm comes and the forecast is ominous. A winter hurricane they call it. I’m intrigued.

The snow is heavy and the winds high. By the early afternoon, I think about stepping outside for a better feel to it all. And here’s where the problem presents itself. My doors, both front and back, are held closed by snow drifts.

Usually, if such a thing happens, it’s either the front door or the back... the snow will only pile up in these drifts where the wind blows. But on this day, there’s so much snow coming down... and so much wind swirling about... it comes from all sides.

I call my parents and talk to dad. “I’m stuck”. I say. “Snowed in”.

Dad vows to come over when the weather breaks and break the seal to the tomb that is my house.

After I hang up the phone, I give it another try. A bit more force on my end... force being my shoulder against the door and feet planting into the porch mat... gains my freedom. I open the door enough to slip out through the crack.

I climb out as a mountaineer squeezing through a crevice... leaving the warmth of civilization and entering the world of whipping white. Giant globs of snow... the result of hundreds of flakes being mashed together before ever making it to the ground... slap my face.

I stay long enough to do what needs to be done. I shovel out my front door. Forget a walkway. I don’t need to clear room to get anywhere. Just enough to be able to open the door when I want to.

I venture through the lane to my back yard. Trudging through the narrow passage with my head tucked low to the ground, keeping the snow from my eyes. And at the back, I repeat the door clearing process. Just enough to be able to open... nothing more.

The trek back to my front door sees me retracing my steps. Stomping my feet into the holes made less than a half hour before. I could be wandering the Himalayas. It would be no different.

Re-entering my front porch was as an astronaut returning to the shuttle after a space walk. Or as a deep sea explorer, returning to the submarine. My porch has become an airlock. A barrier from the harshness out there... and the life in here.

Stripping off my shell of snow swept protection, I return to the phone and call back to my parents. “I’m free”. I say. Much relief comes from the other end of the line. Perhaps relief in that their only son is not entombed alone any longer. But more likely relief that no more thought need be given to the idea of making the drive from their home to mine. In this weather, such journeys are like space travel. My parents can remain safely on Earth. The emergency on my Mars has been averted.

For the rest of the day, some ten hours or so, I return to the outdoors regularly... to turn back the snow. It becomes a routine. Every hour and a half, I could get out through my doors and remove the buildup of white. Two hours may be too much time to wait. At an hour and a half, the snow has already built up over the bottom inches of the doors... just not enough to get a stranglehold on the house.

The day is an interesting one. Being in row houses on the edge of the downtown core, my life is an urban one. I have a back yard, with large trees. But these are urban trees. Planted in straight lines, making artificial rows. Growing this way for a hundred years.

Yet even with my urban setting, a rural lifestyle is brought on by the weather. Wood stoves and fire places... nearby windows glowing with the flicker of candles... and the sounds of snowmobiles. Yes snowmobiles.

If the wind weren’t blowing so high, they could be heard from blocks away, but as things are, I only hear them when they reach my doorstep. I look out, down upon the street from my loft window, and see the bobbing light of the snowmobile, followed closely by the vehicle itself. A neighbour, making his way down the street, this urban street, on a snowmobile. He bounces over the rolling hills of street snow. And disappears down the road, into the swirling white air.

Later that night, I go out again to clean my doors. And while there, I pause a moment. I wander out into the middle of my street. The snowmobile tracks gone already, blown from existence. A few sets of footprints are all that can be seen. Snowy depressions that show signs of passers by. The prints are out here in the middle of the road. No need for pedestrians to be shy tonight. All cars are now snow mounds, blending in along side that which plows have shoved up along the sides of the road.

And there I stand in my street. Windows flickering on either side of me... candles and lanterns dancing light on drapery. And the sound of the wind above. Too strong for a howl. Winter hurricanes don’t howl. They scream. Screaming down my street. Screaming by my ears. Screaming over the houses and down the hills.

And there, twenty feet from my front door... with my car buried in white some ten feet to my left... and surrounded by people who linger and wait just on the other side of wind swept walls... there I know what it feels like atop Mount Everest. With the snow whipping your face, with fading tracks of those adventurers who passed before me. And with the winds... winds that scream about me.


MONDAY...
— Reasonable day... although it starts rough. 5:30 alarm clocks are jarring.

TUESDAY...
— Work is hard on the back today. Home getting nailed with a hurricane. One place on the island getting more than 230 mm of rain today. Crazy. St. John’s got more than 130 mm and winds up to 150 km/h... mom and dad lose a tree.
— Supper after work with Karl. He buys me the meal and gives me one of his paintings. Quite nice of him. A good time.

WEDNESDAY...
— Last outdoor softball game of 2011. It goes alright... the legs aren’t thrilled with me... but just some groans from knees and calves... nothing serious.
— Watch some hockey on TV tonight. Exhibition hockey stinks... why any fan would pay more than $10 to watch it live, I don’t rightly know. Plenty of suckers out there I guess.

THURSDAY...
— Fairly ordinary work day with grocery shopping to follow and some PVR’d TV after that.

FRIDAY...
— Mixed bag at work. I do three or four different things.
— Hockey pool draft after work. I pick 4th out of 9 teams and, even with that, love the team I got.
— Some evening TV and video game hockey.

SATURDAY...
— Baseball day on the video game front. And I join Netflix. Get a free month to try it out... watched a movie off my Playstation 3. JCVD was good. This also allows me to watch any Netflix movie or TV show on my Touch as well. So we’ll see... maybe I’ll keep it.
— The day after that hockey pool draft I liked, one of my players is injured. Bad sign.