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Thursday, January 13, 2011
From Cruel Winter to Winter Wonderland
I was crunching through the snow towards the garage this morning, admiring the stray snowflakes drifting down and the white, clean look of the morning, when it occured to me to wonder how much of our cultural tendency to see winter as a picturesque season relates to the fact that we have furnaces and down blankets and heavy jackets and reliable food supplies. I would imagine that the transformation of winter from a cruel, bitter, impersonal force to a source of bland holiday cards has a lot to do with the fact we can usually watch winter without having to worry about being to stuck in it. Something our ancestors of a few centuries ago, much less a few millenia ago, did not share.
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4 comments:
I see that truth even on a lesser plane in how a fellow blogger who neither shovels nor drives in snow, exults in it more than I, who both shovels and drives. Although I've been on strike as far as shoveling this winter (if we get stuck, we get stuck) and have enjoyed the snowy weather 32.67% more than normal.
Yes, I'll admit my enjoyment of watching snow fall is rather tempered by remembering how long my driveway is. But for now I'm new up here and the asthetics win.
I agree that my aesthetic enjoyment of the snow is definitely enhanced first by the fact that I grew up in Texas and second by the fact that being either pregnant or having a small nursing baby every winter for the past five years, I don't have to go out and shovel it nor do I have a daily commute in it. Back in my single days when I was walking more than a mile a day to get to and from work the first snow was always magical but after that it definitely paled a bit. Especially I'd find myself grumbling about people who didn't shovel their portions of the sidewalks making me have to walk in the slushy streets.
Did you ever read The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie author)? Now that's some tough times. Imagine defrosting the water to wash your face every morning because it has frozen in the bowl by your bed. Or eating the same meager rations for months on end. It makes me feel like a sissy for complaining about being snowed in for a week last year, only 24 hrs without power.
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