Today is one of those days when the weather is so brutal you expect to hear reports on the news about people dying because of the cold. Normally this would just be par for the winter suckfest course up here, but last week we had unusually mild temperatures. It’s been so mild, the snowbanks all over town were melting. While walking across campus one day, I noticed green, as in green grass. You have to understand that this is just something you don’t see up here between the months of December and March.
The university’s Winter Carnival is next week, and for the past few weeks students have been starting their colossal snow statues for the statue competition. As far as big things go up here, this is a Big Thing, and it wasn’t looking good for the statue builders as their snow creations were turning into lopsided half-melted blobs, not unlike the ice masses that form on the inside walls of the freezer case. I actually wondered to myself, maybe there won’t be enough snow for statues this year? Which just shows you that even though I’ve lived up here for almost six years, I’m still a U.P. rookie. Of course there will be snow. Even if it seems spring is right around the corner, don’t forget that we don’t have a season known as spring. Wake up tomorrow and you’ll be up to your neck in the white stuff. Skiers and sledders will run through the streets rejoicing while the rest of us scrape away frozen tears while strapping on boots and ten layers of clothing.
There is nothing kind about winter in the Upper Peninsula. Travel agencies post deals on their marquees for Acapulco getaways, tickets to the Price is Right in sunny California, ANYTHING that doesn’t require down jackets or waterproof footwear, because for some it’s the only way to survive the season. Sure there are the crazies people who actually enjoy the white stuff, the ones who can’t wait to affix their phallic shaped status symbols gear lockers to the tops of their Subarus, telling the world why yes, I love the outdoors. I love the outdoors so much that I bought this big expensive plastic box to strap to my expensive car, and inside the box are my expensive outdoor recreational devices. These are the people who do their grocery shopping in their skiing attire, not because they didn’t have time to change, but because somehow, they reason, it makes them look cool. See? Even these types have suffered brain damage due to the cold weather. They must admit the winter is long, and the winter is cold. And when they’re out scooping the snow and ice that the plow leaves behind out of the end of their driveway, they are cursing the weather just like the rest of us. They’re just doing it in their unflattering “fashionable” downhill skiing attire.
I didn’t have much knowledge of U.P. winters the first year I lived here, only hearing rumors about the average snowfall. I’d lived in Detroit, where we got at most a few feet of snow a year, just enough for a few inches on the ground at Christmas and perhaps a “major” storm that would close school for a day. I thought the idea of big-time snow sounded cool and fun. “I could live anywhere,” I told a friend, “with the exception of Florida.” Why not Florida? I had too many bad memories associated with the entire state, from bad vacations with the Ex, to the weather (if there’s anything I hate more than being cold, it’s being too hot), to my fear of alligators (or is it crocodiles? No fucking diff to me).
So snow sounded fun, like an adventure. And when I first moved here and discovered hockey, a sport that we weren’t brought up playing because the cost was prohibitive (Hey, play baseball! It’s cheaper!), I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. But I’ve gotten over it. I love hockey, but I could play hockey anywhere. I could even box up my gear at this point in my life and take a long break from any sport requiring anything frozen. And maybe it’s because I no longer have any room left in my brain for a lot of extracurricular activities after becoming a mother, or should I say, what’s left of my brain, since my current job requires me to use about 5% of it on a regular basis, and the rest has by now suffered hypothermia, shriveled up and died.
This is the first year I’ve thought to myself that I could, without regret, pack up and leave this town. There are so many great things about living here: the slow pace of life, the gorgeous summers (oh, the summers are beautiful) and more trees than concrete everywhere you look.
But today all I see is snow. All I feel is cold. And I know that it will last for two months longer than it should.
