This is my day off and cripes, you guys, it's 8 degrees below zero. The wind is blowing about 25 miles per hour. The 12 inches of snow that fell in the last 36 hours is drifting over driveways, sidewalks, roads, yards, and woodpiles. The landscape is a whirling white haze with a howling soundtrack that resembles an endless BN&SF freight train except that there is no train. And when there is one you can't hear it for the noise of the gale. Birds are losing their grip on the feeders and blowing off their perches before they get enough to eat.
The foot of snow I cleared yesterday afternoon somehow made its way back into the driveway overnight and about six inches of new snow landed on top of that. The guy who drives the snowplow for our village came by and added another foot or so that he scraped off the street in a speeding, frosty explosion as exciting as any special effect in a Hollywood blockbuster.
My first two waking hours (excludes dressing time) of this day are spent shoveling snow from the porch with a scoop shovel, making my way to the garage door in 6-inch increments to get to the snow blower.
For the sake of our friends in warmer climes it should be noted that snow blower is a misnomer; it doesn't really blow snow. Something of a cross between a steamboat and a lawnmower, it is a contraption in which an internal combustion engine takes the place of boilers and pitman arms to turn an auger-like paddle wheel amidships at a dizzying speed. The wheel in turn forces snow up and out of a smokestack on the main deck in a stream that resembles that of a high pressure fire hose. The smokestack--old-time rivermen prefer the term chimney--can be cranked so as to expel the snow in the direction of the pilot's choosing.
But it does not blow snow. The wind blows snow. And when you are navigating a snow blower no matter where you aim the chimney the wind blows the snow right back into your face and encrusts both the starboard and port sides of it into a snotty frozen mass that clings to your whiskers for the rest of your voyage.
With the offending snow again relocated from porch, sidewalk, driveway, and decks, it's time to haul the wood. Shuffling back and forth to the woodpile burrows a path that improves with the hauling of each armload. By the time the rick is full you are pretty well warmed up. Only a moron would remove sweaty hands from his gloves and grab onto the brass doorknob on his way back inside to enjoy coffee and the latest issue of The New Yorker while sitting in the warmth of the wood stove.
Today is the first day of winter. We're off to a good start.
2 comments:
sounds like you need some new gloves, you know, the gore-tex kind that let moisture out, but not in.
Love the use of the word "rick." I had to look it up and saw its apparent primary usage in "rick of straw/hay." But the word has a storied history and application, and thefreedicionary.com cites the following examples: "rick of bricks, 1703; of coal, 1881; of corn, 1382; of grain; of peas; of snow, 1886; of straw, 1589; of wheat, 1557; hayrick, 1895."
To this list must be added "rick of deep-frozen firewood humped into a house by a guy with an ice-encrusted beard, a fortnight shy of 2009."
The word also has a lovely use as a transitive verb, so that you might write, "Cripes, you guys, I ricked the damn logs into da house and froze my earlobes."
The Brits also use it to mean "a painful muscle spasm, especially in the neck or back," which seems to have been adopted in some fashion as "crick" in American English.
It goes without saying that ricking armloads of splintery oak cordwood could've given you a rick in your trapezius. At least that's where I usually get ricked. Left side, middle of the chicken wing.
Captain, my captain, sail your snowblower on. The chimney's gushing snow and the wind is astern.
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