Revisit
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
I apologize if I seem to be rehashing old gound, but I can't quite get the farm out of my mind. That is, more than usual. Somehow more than usual in winter.
Imagine being on the prairie where the wind has not seen an obstacle since some mountains up in Alberta. Now imagine it is February. When it gets dark an hour earlier than say Chicago. Now, slightly to the west of the house is a thin strand of cottonwood trees, and a few spruce. These are planted to give a little bit of a windbreak, as they grow relatively fast. The temperature is 20 below (they haven't yet invented wind chill) and the wind picks up. There is a couple of inches of snow on the ground, but there was a day of thawing, so the top of the drifts are frozen.
You would think that the cold was enough, but the wind begins to push on the house. After supper, the family is listening on the radio to the news as you do the dishes on a step stool. Where the ceiling meets the wall corner, you see a chunk of frost building up. As it turns out, the thermometer won't get above -20 for about two weeks.
For a few years in there, tires were made of Rayon. These had the tendency in the cold to hold the flat spot where they sat overnight. There would be a little bump as the flat spot came around again. After you turned a corner, the tires would be out of sync, and for a few minutes there would be this odd rhythmic tune.
The wind would sometimes still, and some days will be quiet and clear. The air is clear, sharp. You learn to tell the temperature by the kind of crunch your footsteps make in the snow.
The grandparents used to keep about six months worth of food in their basement. Who among us does this these days?
Another note about the breathtaking nature of the prairie (again from Rys's blog) is
pleasure and a slower pace of life (II) in the countryside where i grew up, on the northern plains along the Rocky Mountain Front. the drive from Missoula along state route 200, over rogers pass and emerging through the foothills onto the great sea of prairie, never fails to take my breath away. it is here that you can understand that Montana's nickname, Big Sky Country, is literally true. only out on the open ocean can one view an expanse of sky so vast, through air so clear that you can see weather forming many miles away. i've lived all over this country of ours, and my heart dwells in many places, but the deepest of my taproots is here, where the stillness is so complete that you can hear birdsong half a mile away, and you would swear that you can feel and hear the earth breathe.
Then imagine what spring is like, as the ice and snow melt and the days lengthen on their way to the very long days of summer.