The Winter of My Discontent

The big winter storm that devastated so much of the east last week wasn't so bad here. It snowed hard all day on Sunday and into Monday morning. It was a good thing I canceled church. We ended up with a foot of new snow. We didn't get any ice. We didn't lose power. School was canceled on Monday so Miriam didn't have to go anywhere. Stacey and Hannah stayed home from work.

It was cold all week. Very cold. Soul numbingly cold. The temperature hovered near zero all week – just above it during the day, and way below it during the night. That sort of cold has a profound effect on me. It makes me sluggish. I can almost feel my blood thicken, my brain slow down. It lulls me into a state of torpor – "a state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually marked by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate." That's me – I am one of those animals. All I want to do is curl up under a blanket with a book and read and nap my way through the day. Going outside requires the tedious process of putting on layers and layers of clothing and that takes more time and energy than I want to expend. I had to fight sinking into torpor all week. I made myself move. I had to go down to the barn out of necessity to care for my flock. It was painful. I had to keep the woodstove burning day and night, and that meant replenishing the woodpile on the back porch and from the woodpile out in the yard. That was painful too. I mean, it really was painful to go out. Breathing the frozen air hurt my nose. The wind stung my face and brought tears to my eyes – the only parts of me that were exposed. I don't know how people who live in cold climates where winters are always like this, places like Scandinavia or Russia or Canada, can stand it.

On Monday I finished a unit in my online Japanese lessons on booking and staying at a hotel and one of the lessons was about staying at hot spring inns called onsen ryokan (由緑新宿). In Japan they have many hot springs. If there was a hot spring anywhere near here, I would be in it. Up to my neck. They'd never get me out. Inspired by my lesson, I spent an hour or two on Monday online, indulging myself by planning a fantasy trip to an onsen ryokan. After looking at different places, I settled on one in the Kyoto area called Momijiya Bekkan. I chose it because I love Kyoto. While I was on my mission, I went there every chance I could get. This inn is actually in a place twenty minutes outside Kyoto called Takao. It is famous for its autumn leaves. My companion at the time, Elder Pew, and I went there in the fall of 1978 to see the leaves and enjoy lunch with a friend while seated on a balcony overlooking the river. It was magical. The online blurb for this onsen ryokan says:

"This folk-style ryokan is situated in a quiet and picturesque place called Takao, which is famous for its beautiful streams, greenery, fireflies, autumn leaves, and other rich natural resources. You have to cross a suspension bridge in order to get to the ryokan, which is also a distinctive characteristic. It has six guest rooms equipped with open-air baths, including two detached guest rooms and four other rooms. Gender-segregated semi-open-air baths and a rental bath outside the rooms for private use are also available. In summer, you can have dinner at "kawadoko," a special type of Japanese-style restaurant where the floor is placed beside the river, while enjoying services provided by maikos (apprentice geishas)."

All of that for just ¥75,000 (around $500) per person per night! Well, I can dream can't I?

In Japan, they even have monkeys that enjoy the hot springs in the winter. In Jugokudani Park in Nagano Prefecture north of Tokyo, Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) come down from the forest in the winter to sit in the hot springs. Lucky monkeys.

Sometimes I wish I was a Japanese macaque.

I once went to a hot spring in the Owens Valley in California while we were visiting my brother and his family there. It was a rocky pool, out in the middle of nowhere. The water was hot and soothing. That's a happy memory. There are no hot springs around here. The closest ones are in New York State at places like Saratoga Springs and Ballston Spa. They are five or more hours  away and not really what I have in mind. So, no hot springs for me. I'll have to settle for daydreams.

I didn't go down to the barn at all last Sunday during the storm. I'd given the flock extra rations on the Saturday before in anticipation of that. So Monday when I went down, I was glad to find that everything was fine. They still had food and water, which I replenished. I collected twenty-six eggs. Trudging through the deep snow down and back was the worst part of the morning. It was 9° and still snowing. Stacey thought I looked pathetic and took a video of me.

Toward noon the storm finally cleared up. It stopped snowing and the sun tried to come through. Kurt came over with his tractor and dug out the driveway. The township plow had blocked the end of it with three feet of hard packed snow and we would not have been able to get a car out without Kurt's help. By then we'd used the last of the wood we had on the back porch, so Hannah spent an hour replenishing the porch woodpile.

Hannah hauling firewood.

When I went out at 3:00 to do the afternoon chores down at our barn and over at Foster's next door, the sky was clear, it was cold, and the wind was blowing hard. There were places in the orchard and out in the big garden where the drifts were over the top of my boots. It felt cold enough to flash-freeze a wooly mammoth. 

My path through the drifts to go next door.

School had a two hour delay on Tuesday morning. With the wind chill at -20, they needed the extra time to get the busses running. Miriam was in school and glad for the delay, but she would have preferred they cancel all together. They are hesitant to cancel now because they've used up their allotted snow days and will have to start knocking days off of spring break to make up for any days missed from here on. I'm glad I don't have to fuss about any of that anymore. I drove Miriam to school because I needed the car for an appointment with my chiropractor. I hadn't had an adjustment in a long time and I sorely needed one. 

Later that afternoon when I picked Miriam up from school, we drove to the Amish bulk food store up on Fox Hill. The top of Fox Hill is open farmland and when the wind blows, the snow drifts continually across the road. The plows have a hard time keeping the road clear. In some places the banks of snow on the sides of the road are pushed so high, it's like driving through a bobsled run.

Wednesday was another subzero morning and another two hour delay for school. After I dropped Miriam off at school, I drove up to Wellsville to run errands. I checked the chapel again to make sure there were no broken pipes. I went to the library to exchange books. I did some grocery shopping. I didn't mind being out in the cold because I had on layers of clothing and spent most of the time in a heated car. After so many days of arctic weather, I can't say that I've gotten used to it. I've learned to cope with it. I never want to actually get used to it. 

As I sat at my desk one morning last week, huddled over my heater, I took a look at the weather in other places. I like to compare conditions here in Gold to other locations to reassure myself that I live in the best of all possible places. I do love it here, but sometimes I love it a little less than other times. I have a friend who lives in Juneau, Alaska. Last week while we were below zero most of the time, Juneau was in the 40s and rainy. Josiah and Vanessa live in Bozeman, Montana, a place I always think of as being far too cold a place for me. Again, they had temperatures in the 40s. Stacey's aunt lives in La Jara, Colorado, in a valley high in the Rocky Mountains that is a famous cold spot. They were in the 40s too. I knew without looking that the places where my other children, my siblings, and other family members live – North Carolina, Utah, Oregon, Arizona, California, and Washington – were not as cold as Gold. And then I checked places where I wished I was – Honolulu, 83°, Tahiti, 84°, Aruba, 85°. I don't know why I tortured myself by looking at all those places. It only fueled my discontented mood. As an antidote to that, I went to my photo files and looked at pictures from the month of June. I wanted to remind myself what life is like here during the best month. It was only a partial cure. It did rekindle my memory and restored my hope for better days ahead. But it also made my heart yearn for June in January. Having January makes June all the more precious. That's what I keep telling myself anyway.

Remembering June.

June.

On Thursday school had another two hour delay and that made Miriam happy again. She likes having the extra time in the morning. I spent most of the day feeding the woodstove and reading. The house felt too quiet at lunchtime, so I queued up some music to fill the void. This time I chose music from the movies. A lot of movies have amazing soundtracks. My list that afternoon was a mix of my favorite film composers – John Barry (Dances With Wolves, Out of Africa, Somewhere in Time), Thomas Newman (The Shawshank Redemption, Meet Joe Black, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo), Mark Isham (A River Runs Through It, October Sky), James Horner (Field of Dreams, Braveheart, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind), and Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, the J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies, Up, Super 8, Inside Out). I didn't put John Williams on this queue. He got his own day on Friday.

Friday morning it was -9° with a wind chill of -23°. School was delayed again, but Miriam was not in school, so we didn't care. After Stacey and Hannah left for work, I stoked the woodstove, set up my movie soundtrack queue, and curled up on the couch with a blanket and my book. The music that morning was all John Williams, possibly the greatest film score composer of all time. I believe that a great soundtrack can make a mediocre movie good, a good movie great, and a great movie a masterpiece. It seems any film whose soundtrack was composed by John Williams is blessed. Here's the list of the soundtracks I chose (out of many others) for my queue: Jaws, the Star Wars movies, E.T., Schindler's List, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Empire of the Sun, the Indiana Jones movies, Hook, the Jurassic Park movies, Saving Private Ryan, Superman, the Home Alone movies, and three of the Harry Potter movies.

By noon I'd burned all the firewood in the house and on the porch. I was sad about that. Miriam and I bundled up and went out to haul in wood from the outside woodpile. By then it had warmed to 10° with a wind chill of 0°, better than the -23° we had earlier, but not much. We brought in the last of the usable firewood and stacked it by the woodstove. We're going to have to buy more wood somewhere and that's not going to be fun at all.

Hauling firewood.

The last of the firewood.

Saturday was cold, but we were above zero at dawn, by a whole four degrees. It was a quiet day, a do-nothing day. I felt no motivation to move any more than I had to. I went down to do the chores. I had to chase starlings out of the coop. They were seeking refuge from the cold, but they eat up all the chicken food and poop on everything. I closed the automatic door and unplugged it. Now they can't get in. The chickens also can't get out, but they don't go out in the snow anyway. When I collected the eggs, I found someone had made a nest on the floor and in it were three eggs that had frozen solid and split their shells.

It was cold enough this morning, 4° with a wind chill of -9°, that I could have canceled church again, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I did worry about some of the older members going out in the cold, but hoped they would use commonsense. There was no new snow and I knew the parking lot at the church had been plowed out. It turned out fine.

Today is the first day of February. This is the hardest month of year for me. It is twenty-eight days and a hundred years too long. I start to get even more antsy in February than I was in January. I know that it's still solidly winter, and usually the worst of it, but I have things to do. One thing in particular. One of the big garden jobs of the year – pruning the orchard. I began that back in January when we had a rare almost warm day, but there is so much more to do and time is running out. I have to finish before the trees start to wake up in March. In a kind year, February might give me a few days of thaw when maybe we'll hit the 40s, even the 50s. But it isn't often kind. If I don't get a warm spell, I'll have to prune in the cold. I've done it many times and hated it every time.

The Thayns are planning a trip to Florida at the end of the month and it might be possible for Stacey and me to join them there. Negotiations are underway and I have high hopes it will happen. It would make the month a little more bearable knowing I can escape the cold and snow for a few days. I hope Florida has warmed up by then. Last week it wasn't warm there. I need warmth and sunshine and ocean sunsets and doing all that with my grandchildren sounds like a dream come true. We'll see.