Tardy Winter

Winter has settled upon us at last here in NE Indiana. First the bitter cold and now, finally, snow. Through all the cold recently we’d gotten a few inches at most, an inch here, a couple more there, some of it melting in between. But now we are under a blizzard warning, the airport is already closed, and they’re predicting 5-8 inches today and another 4-6 tonight. It’s still chilly too, about 15 degrees Fahrenheit though with the wind it feels like -2. Now I’m really getting homesick for Minnesota. Here I thought we’d gotten all the winter we were likely to get this year. I’m just glad we’re not getting the 100 inches they got in parts of Upstate New York. I’ve experienced 13 inches one day and 13 more the next, but I cannot conceive of 100 inches. It beggars the imagination.

It’s pretty too, blowing around out there, obscuring my visibility. Much prettier than if you’re in a car on the road. I’m glad I’ve nowhere pressing to be today, though if this keeps up I’ll be rescheduling our clinic visit tomorrow. It’s a good day for introspection and quiet pleasures such as curling up with a good book. It really makes me appreciate our modern conveniences too. I’ve always thought that the early Minnesota settlers were mad to stay a second winter after experiencing their first, given the nature of their log cabins without insulation, cold air and snow blowing through the chinks and windows.

I’ve been in cabins and tents in inclement weather and it makes me wonder what it must have been like for my Heathen ancestors, hiding away in their longhouses with the storm howling without. They’d have had no weather forecast, no inkling of how much snow might come or how far temperatures might drop. They’d have had no recourse to radar, to wind speeds or windchills, and it must have seemed, without an understanding of how weather worked, that the world itself had gone mad. What importance that fire must have assumed, and the supply of firewood so carefully accumulated before the first snows fell. Not to mention food supplies. And there was no one but your neighbors, but those of your own family and community to help you, to depend upon. No distant national government was going to swoop in and rescue you when the going got tough, not that this is any more true of the modern United States of America, as the unfortunate citizens of the Gulf Coast discovered when Katrina struck in 2005!

Even so, such an existence would change perceptions quite a bit, I think. It would bring you closer not only to the raw power of nature and make more apparent humankind’s relative weakness in comparison, but also the Gods, ones ancestors and the spirits upon whom you would depend. I think perhaps we’re almost better off with our options being so limited, given the coldness directed our way by the Federal Government, the minions of which care nothing for family or community but only about enriching themselves at the expense of those it is designed to care for. As was shown by Katrina, extended family groups with deep and true commitments did better than individuals and nuclear family units. Since FEMA did not touch most people personally, it was these ties, and not ties to a distant Federal government, that got people through the crisis.

What our modern age has shown us is that technology is fragile and of dubious dependability, but that the family and community can still be the focus and reservoir of strength required to see tough times through. And when I sit here and look out at the swirling snow and think back to those generations many centuries ago, I think that is how it was meant to be. Family and community are tangibles; distant governments are ephemeral and of questionable reliability. They touch you readily enough when it is something they want; if it is something you need, they are much harder to find.