Author's note: I actually did write this on the Solstice, but Blogger had a fight with my browser and they weren't speaking to each other. Fortunately they've made up now. Happy Solstice, everyone, and happy birthday, Dad. Stay warm out there as the year turns back toward the light.
Solstice again.
It's been a weird winter. October was warm - almost fall-like, with mild temperatures and minimal snow. November was ghastly cold - more like January than November. We had snow - plenty of it - but it remained so cold that it never packed down. It was loose and dry, squeaking under my boots, fluffing at a kick.
December has been like March. It's been up and down temperatures - snowing one day, raining the next - and three Sundays in a row it has spiked up warm and poured down rain and snow both - sometimes both together, snowflakes and raindrops rattling together against my windshield and my windows. We've had thaws galore; the upside - if it thaws enough - is that if there's only a little ice on your driveway, it will soon be either so rutted that your traction is excellent, or it will be gone entirely. The down side is that if you have thick ice, or a few inches of snow, the rain and warmth will melt it into something so slick you're risking life and limb to walk or drive on it.
Oh, well. It is Alaska, after all. But this is very weird weather for December.
Last night - -well, or this morning, really - I was called in around 1 a.m. I told the client I could be at the clinic in about twenty to thirty minutes. As it turned out, this was wildly optimistic.
It was snowing when I went outside: Wet, dense, heavy flakes. I had about 3 or 4 fresh inches down. No big, I thought as my Border collie went gamboling out into the yard. It's coming down pretty hard, but fresh, damp snow should provide me reasonable traction going down my hill, and it's the wee hours so there won't be much traffic once I hit the road.
I was right about both of those - but it wasn't much help. I hardly made it onto the main drag when I cruised in to an area where the snow was falling much more heavily than at my house.
Driving into heavy snowfall like that makes me feel like I'm in the Millenium Falcon and I'm making the jump to hyperspeed. The snow comes at you in long streaks, like you're driving into a meteor shower. I was on the tailing edge of a migraine, with the attendant visual weirdness, and I found this distracting and vertiginous. In a further 50 yards this was not my biggest problem. By then the more pressing concern was that I was driving into a whiteout. The road was completely hidden in churned snow and the only indicator of whether or not I was in my designated lane was the rumble of the buzz strips bracketing the lane. The problem being, of course, that it was difficult - if not impossible - to tell which buzz strip I was driving on.
I slowed down, of course; pretty soon I was going around 20 mph, peering into the dense white of the falling snow, guessing at the lane, grateful there is no one else on the road. Behind me a pair of headlights has appeared, drawing closer; at this point I was considering getting out of my truck and walking out in front of it in the hope that I might see where the lane was. But the headlights have come near, and it's a semi. I decide instead to keep going, slowly, slowly. I have a client coming in who needs me; if she is braving the roads, I have to do the same.
At long last, after miles of whiteout, the snowfall diminishes to something a little more driveable. I speed up to 35 and make it in to the clinic in one piece. The client is waiting for me. I test, diagnose and treat her little colitis dog, who is wiggling happily (despite her extremely bloody diarrhea) and who spends 30% of her time trying to kiss me. (The dog, I miean, not the owner).The rest of her time is divided evenly between cuddling with her owner and trying to escape the exam room so she can explore the hospital. I release them with medication and warnings to drive carefully.
Hm. Speaking of that... Now it's 2:30 and the snow is now coming down hard in town, as hard as it was on the road headed in. Maybe I'll just crash here for a bit and drive home when I've had some sleep.
As it turns out, sleep isn't on the agenda either. I get a call at 3:30, a dog with a proptosed eye. it's a Boston - a short-faced breed with shallow eye sockets. It's not hard to knock the eye out of such a shallow open socket, but it still needs attention - and anesthesia, and a procedure - to put it back. The dog already has previously-existing damage to the NON-proptosed eye. I advise the owner that we're now risking the vision on the good eye. They take some time to think it over, but don't call back to bring the dog in.
Around 4 a.m. I fall asleep and doze fitfully til 5:30, at which time I hear my staff coming in. I get up, shower and go upstairs to the main floor of the clinic. Ah, here we go: a Boston with a proptosed eye has come in. I have a look. It's very red and swollen, and the cornea is dull and gummy. The other eye has a cataract. I decide that maybe waiting to reduce the proptosis is a bad idea. My tech (the Divine Miss Em) is willing, so we sedate the Boston and put her on anesthesia.
Reducing the proptosis is as slick and satisfying as it always is. I place some stents and suture the lids together to protect the swollen globe. I try to talk owner into vaccinating the dog - five months old and never immunized, on the grounds that it was too small. The owner - who was apparently a tech a few years ago in another state - was told that a dog could not be vaccinated if it was below six pounds.
Hm. Six pounds, you say? Why six? Why not five or ten - surely rounder numbers? If we're just being arbitrary, why don't we pick one of those? Unless we're picking 6 in an attempt to appear NOT to be arbitrary. I rack my brain for the possible sounrce of this bizarre advice.
Ah, yes. I have it: This is advice from the Secret Breeder Handbook - a book of fallacious "knowledge" that seems to circulate amongst a certain segment of the dog-breeding &/or dog-owning population. The information in the Secret Breeder Handbook is incorrect, but it bears such a weight of authority in the minds of those who swear by it that all my education and experience are for naught: I and my best advice - no matter how assiduously supported by objective testing, logic and evidence -will be ignored in favor of the dogma [so to speak] contained in the hallowed pages of the Secret Breeder Handbook.
Sigh. I'm really too tired for this this morning. I need more coffee if I'm going to take this on.
I spend a few minutes explaining the biology of vaccines and the AAHA and AVMA recommendations (and the reasoning thereof) for puppy vaccines. I do not mention that unless the owner was a tech in another Universe, not just another state, the mysterious 6-pound cutoff is something entierly made-up and unsupported by any biological reality. Luckily the owner is willing to be educated and we do in fact vaccinate her puppy - which I hope sincerely we've done soon enough that I don't see her back next week with her cataract, her sutured-shut eyelid AND a raging case of parvo.
So now I am updating the blog while I wait for rush hour (and possibly the worst of the snowstorm) to be over. I can handle tired and I can handle rush hour and I can handle snow; I'd just rather not handle them all at the same time. I intend to go home, snuggle in with some dogs, and sleep. Maybe for a long time. A week, even. By then the light will be rising a little - not much, but maybe enough that I'll feel restless and wakey - instead of that drowsy, deep-winter hibernatory feeling I have right now.
So how did you spend your Solstice?
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snow. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The Weather Wild
Okay, I actually do know that this is Alaska and I should expect weather extremes. That doesn't keep me from remarking on it from time to time; even we (who are used to it) find it dramatic at times.
This is a la nina year, which I was cheerfully told by a client would mean a colder-than-usual winter. I immediately cursed him roundly and then threatened him with bodily harm if he was right, but strangely, that has not changed things for me. It HAS been colder than usual, and that's not the extent of it.
For one thing, the weather predictors seem to have taken la nina as licence to lie to us more than usual. Okay, I know they aren't really lying; they're guessing. But they'll blithely promise us a 10-degree jump in temperature, with clouds and snow, and what we get is crystal clear skies and a 5 degree DROP in temperature. It's hard not to be annoyed by that, especially if your starting point is subzero.
For another thing, we had some wicked strong winds this winter. It started when I was at work one day; the temperature had come up, according to the thermometer at the clinic. However, the wind came up along with it, dropping the effective temperature. By evening, when I was getting ready to leave work, it was a challenge to open the back door at the clinic, and should you be so foolish to be coming in that door, you had to watch carefully that the wind didn't slam the door on your ankle hard enough to break it.
Well. THAT'S fun.
Even more fun was the fact that we'd had a recent snow, and all of it was now blowing southwest at a high rate of speed. There is, of course, the bright side: just walking to the truck, I got free dermabrasion from tiny sand-like grains of ice and road grit.
Mmmm. That's refreshing.
Moreover, once you stagger blindly across the parking lot and find your truck (mainly by feel, since you can't really open your eyes wider than miserly slits), you get to try to open the truck door. Since the truck is parked nose-on into the wind, this will require at least three tries, since on the first two the wind will snatch the door out of your rapidly-numbing hands and slam it shut again. The windshield will be hazy with airborne grit, but the truck will start faithfully.
Now comes the entertaining drive home. There will be a ground blizzard of epic proportions. This is disorienting to drive in for several reasons: First, you can't see the road itself, nor any lane lines or other markings. This is in part because it's dark out, and in part because the curtain of blowing snow is inches thick and not punctuated by much in the way of lulls or gaps. Second, as you squint at the river of snow flowing across the road, your eye wants to follow the motion, which makes it challenging not to let your wheel go with it. This effect is enhanced by the fact that the snow isn't crossing the road perpendicularly, but at something of an angle, making it harder to sort out visually where you are supposed to be aiming your vehicle. And last but not least, you're fighting the buffeting of the gale the entire time, trying to steer a straight course against the blustering tug of the wind on your rig, and through the shifting veil of snow concealing the road from your eye.
Eventually, however, you will arrive home, only to discover that, while the winds are lower at home, the ambient temp is also lower, which makes your truck sad. On the plus side, there's little drifting to contend with, and the winds are forecast to die down overnight.
As it turns out, those weather people lied about that. AGAIN.
In the morning the winds have picked up. Luckily it's a day off, so I can wait til daylight to go out and fight my way back into town (which I might not do if not for the fact that I have to return our on-call cell phone to the clinic). I warm up the truck, back down my hill, sashay my truck forward through the lightly-drifted part of my lower driveway, and pause to check for traffic before I pull out.
Oh, goodie. There are huge drifts across the road now. Yay. Not.
Sighing, I check that the hubs are locked and I pull out, gunning it to ramming speed. I break through the first drift, fishtailing in the deeper snow. Ten feet farther on I hit the second, and largest, drift. The truck shudders, hesitates, bogging down in the snow. The tires are struggling for purchase on the road, but the snow is too deep to allow it. But she's a good little truck and she digs in, slewing and yawing, and powers her way through. After that the last drift is a piece of cake, and we are on our way.
The wind is still grabbing at the truck, bullying it toward the shoulder. I keep two hands on the wheel and fight back. Luckily, the majority of snow available to blow has already blown wherever it's going to, and the visibility is decent. Not as luckily, there's still plenty of road grit.
Overhead, ravens are flying, as if nothing unusual is happening. Crazy Alaskan ravens.
On the way to work, I see a pickup bed topper turtled up in the ditch. Hmm. That's interesting. The wind tore a topper right off a truck, it seems. Even more interesting, further on, there is an entire camper - the kind that fits in a truck bed, with a sleeping compartment that rests on top of the cab - is sitting next to an intersection. It is upright, as if Dorothy's tornado came and plucked it off a truck and set it down complete, right next to the light post. Maybe we're not in Kansas anymore.
I looked to see if there were ruby slippers poking out from underneath, but I didn't see any.
I did, however, see a large piece of panelling flapping heavily against the storefront from which it has been half-torn free, and two street signs whose poles have been bent far enough over that the sign is swaying at knee-height in the verge of the road.
Last but not least, I see an entire 18-wheeler on its side in the ditch. It looks like this happened some hours ago - the site is abandoned, no Troopers or rescue personnel nearby - and the trailer is twisted at an awkward angle to the cab. I hope nobody was hurt.
Eventually I make the clinic, where the wind snatches my door open and tries (but fails) to rip it off its hinges. I stagger across wind-polished ice to the clinic, make it inside without having my ankle bear-trapped in the door, return the cell and catch my breath for a few minutes before braving the wind again.
Repeat for two more days.
Oh, well. It made a break from the cold, anyway. Unfortunately the cold returned thereafter, defying all predictions from the weather guessers that it was going to warm up tomorrow, warm up TOMORROW, I say, HEY! WARM UP!
No? Okay then. Who can I bribe?
I can't complain today. It came up 16 degrees overnight (to a balmy 12 degrees), and it is snowing: Big, light, fluffy crystalline flakes, beautiful to behold. On the road, not as beautiful, because it's snowing to white-out conditions and accumulating fast enough to glaze the roads. Luckily the snow plows are out plowing and sanding, and closer in to town, away from the influence of the Cook Inlet, the snow is lighter and not sticking. And now, drinking tea at the coffee shop and blogging, the sun is shining slantwise below the cloud cover and turning the thinning flakes to diamonds floating on the air. Rifts of blue are showing through the clouds - which is pretty, but probably means the temp will drop again.
Still and all, the light is coming back, which up here is the harbinger of winter's end. The brain defect I have - which calls the end of winter earlier and earlier every year - is fully operational, asserting to me that winter is practically over, all we have to do is January and then it's done, it's only a month more to go, and it could be worse: it could be raining.
Oh. Um... I didn't just curse myself, did I...?
This is a la nina year, which I was cheerfully told by a client would mean a colder-than-usual winter. I immediately cursed him roundly and then threatened him with bodily harm if he was right, but strangely, that has not changed things for me. It HAS been colder than usual, and that's not the extent of it.
For one thing, the weather predictors seem to have taken la nina as licence to lie to us more than usual. Okay, I know they aren't really lying; they're guessing. But they'll blithely promise us a 10-degree jump in temperature, with clouds and snow, and what we get is crystal clear skies and a 5 degree DROP in temperature. It's hard not to be annoyed by that, especially if your starting point is subzero.
For another thing, we had some wicked strong winds this winter. It started when I was at work one day; the temperature had come up, according to the thermometer at the clinic. However, the wind came up along with it, dropping the effective temperature. By evening, when I was getting ready to leave work, it was a challenge to open the back door at the clinic, and should you be so foolish to be coming in that door, you had to watch carefully that the wind didn't slam the door on your ankle hard enough to break it.
Well. THAT'S fun.
Even more fun was the fact that we'd had a recent snow, and all of it was now blowing southwest at a high rate of speed. There is, of course, the bright side: just walking to the truck, I got free dermabrasion from tiny sand-like grains of ice and road grit.
Mmmm. That's refreshing.
Moreover, once you stagger blindly across the parking lot and find your truck (mainly by feel, since you can't really open your eyes wider than miserly slits), you get to try to open the truck door. Since the truck is parked nose-on into the wind, this will require at least three tries, since on the first two the wind will snatch the door out of your rapidly-numbing hands and slam it shut again. The windshield will be hazy with airborne grit, but the truck will start faithfully.
Now comes the entertaining drive home. There will be a ground blizzard of epic proportions. This is disorienting to drive in for several reasons: First, you can't see the road itself, nor any lane lines or other markings. This is in part because it's dark out, and in part because the curtain of blowing snow is inches thick and not punctuated by much in the way of lulls or gaps. Second, as you squint at the river of snow flowing across the road, your eye wants to follow the motion, which makes it challenging not to let your wheel go with it. This effect is enhanced by the fact that the snow isn't crossing the road perpendicularly, but at something of an angle, making it harder to sort out visually where you are supposed to be aiming your vehicle. And last but not least, you're fighting the buffeting of the gale the entire time, trying to steer a straight course against the blustering tug of the wind on your rig, and through the shifting veil of snow concealing the road from your eye.
Eventually, however, you will arrive home, only to discover that, while the winds are lower at home, the ambient temp is also lower, which makes your truck sad. On the plus side, there's little drifting to contend with, and the winds are forecast to die down overnight.
As it turns out, those weather people lied about that. AGAIN.
In the morning the winds have picked up. Luckily it's a day off, so I can wait til daylight to go out and fight my way back into town (which I might not do if not for the fact that I have to return our on-call cell phone to the clinic). I warm up the truck, back down my hill, sashay my truck forward through the lightly-drifted part of my lower driveway, and pause to check for traffic before I pull out.
Oh, goodie. There are huge drifts across the road now. Yay. Not.
Sighing, I check that the hubs are locked and I pull out, gunning it to ramming speed. I break through the first drift, fishtailing in the deeper snow. Ten feet farther on I hit the second, and largest, drift. The truck shudders, hesitates, bogging down in the snow. The tires are struggling for purchase on the road, but the snow is too deep to allow it. But she's a good little truck and she digs in, slewing and yawing, and powers her way through. After that the last drift is a piece of cake, and we are on our way.
The wind is still grabbing at the truck, bullying it toward the shoulder. I keep two hands on the wheel and fight back. Luckily, the majority of snow available to blow has already blown wherever it's going to, and the visibility is decent. Not as luckily, there's still plenty of road grit.
Overhead, ravens are flying, as if nothing unusual is happening. Crazy Alaskan ravens.
On the way to work, I see a pickup bed topper turtled up in the ditch. Hmm. That's interesting. The wind tore a topper right off a truck, it seems. Even more interesting, further on, there is an entire camper - the kind that fits in a truck bed, with a sleeping compartment that rests on top of the cab - is sitting next to an intersection. It is upright, as if Dorothy's tornado came and plucked it off a truck and set it down complete, right next to the light post. Maybe we're not in Kansas anymore.
I looked to see if there were ruby slippers poking out from underneath, but I didn't see any.
I did, however, see a large piece of panelling flapping heavily against the storefront from which it has been half-torn free, and two street signs whose poles have been bent far enough over that the sign is swaying at knee-height in the verge of the road.
Last but not least, I see an entire 18-wheeler on its side in the ditch. It looks like this happened some hours ago - the site is abandoned, no Troopers or rescue personnel nearby - and the trailer is twisted at an awkward angle to the cab. I hope nobody was hurt.
Eventually I make the clinic, where the wind snatches my door open and tries (but fails) to rip it off its hinges. I stagger across wind-polished ice to the clinic, make it inside without having my ankle bear-trapped in the door, return the cell and catch my breath for a few minutes before braving the wind again.
Repeat for two more days.
Oh, well. It made a break from the cold, anyway. Unfortunately the cold returned thereafter, defying all predictions from the weather guessers that it was going to warm up tomorrow, warm up TOMORROW, I say, HEY! WARM UP!
No? Okay then. Who can I bribe?
I can't complain today. It came up 16 degrees overnight (to a balmy 12 degrees), and it is snowing: Big, light, fluffy crystalline flakes, beautiful to behold. On the road, not as beautiful, because it's snowing to white-out conditions and accumulating fast enough to glaze the roads. Luckily the snow plows are out plowing and sanding, and closer in to town, away from the influence of the Cook Inlet, the snow is lighter and not sticking. And now, drinking tea at the coffee shop and blogging, the sun is shining slantwise below the cloud cover and turning the thinning flakes to diamonds floating on the air. Rifts of blue are showing through the clouds - which is pretty, but probably means the temp will drop again.
Still and all, the light is coming back, which up here is the harbinger of winter's end. The brain defect I have - which calls the end of winter earlier and earlier every year - is fully operational, asserting to me that winter is practically over, all we have to do is January and then it's done, it's only a month more to go, and it could be worse: it could be raining.
Oh. Um... I didn't just curse myself, did I...?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Springtime In Alaska
We might actually get one. Who can believe that?
Up to now I've been skeptical. It has been SO cold this spring - following an unusually cold winter and an unusually cold summer the year before (which was in fact so freakishly cold that I didn't even attempt to garden... not even sweet basil, which grows for me as if nuclear-powered, and for which I have many uses and much demand). The weather was just so chilly and unpleasant that I couldn't bring myself to make the slightest attempt; I love my sweet basil plants and I would've felt like I was torturing them, trying to get them to grow in that weather. Even arugula - which grows like a weed - would have been faint and timid in the chill. And attempting tomato plants would have been cruel and unusual punishment. At any rate, as a result of all this, I feel like I've had winter for about the last 19 months.
Mind you, I love my winters. But even I don't love them 12 months a year. I don't tolerate hot muggy weather very well (despite the fact that I used to make my living grooming racehorses on the east coast, where hot and muggy are de rigeur. Somehow I managed not just to tolerate that, but to tolerate it whilst doing a manual labor job 50 hours a week. Don't even ask me.) I spent most of my youth in Colorado, where the summers are often quite hot, although very rarely are they muggy even for a short period of time. I'm no longer accustomed even to that, however.... since moving to Alaska I've grown used to cooler summers. Nowadays, I (and many of my cohorts up here) have been known to whine and complain if the temperature approaches 80 degrees. My friends still in Colorado (when coaxing me to visit) are inclined to try to tempt me down by saying, "But it's a dry heat." To which I usually reply, "So's the inside of my oven, but you don't catch me wanting to spend the summer in there, either."
At any rate, you know it's bad when I, of all people, am craving some hot weather. But here I am, wishing it would pop up 30 degrees over night and stay there until fall. I assure you I never have such thoughts - but this year, I catch myself thinking this all the time. It's very strange.
However, this week there has been a wee glimmer of hope. All last week - and early this week - I had temps 20 to 25 degrees colder than normal at night (and only slightly less unseasonable in the daytime). But in the last few days - and I hesitate to mention this, lest I jinx it - the night time temps have been nearly normal. All afternoon I've been hearing loud thuds as the ice accumulated on my roof is finally starting to slide and fall. Yesterday afternoon, coming home from work, I drove with my window rolled down. The air had a round, fresh, balmy feel, tender and sweet as a ripe peach, as if we might in fact experience spring this year after all. In addition to which - and here I know you'll think I'm being rash - I am starting to hope that my lambs won't instantly flash-freeze as they are being born.
There's still snow on the ground, of course, but Sunday we rotated the ewes to their lambing pen, in which there is a nice barn for them to birth in. By "we" I really mean S&R, since I spent the wee hours of Sunday morning in the ER having a kidney stone, and S&R were pretty certain that I didn't need to be trying to help. Apparently the combination of exhaustion and a dilaudid hangover combined to make me sound truly alarming on the phone, so by the time I got over to Wildwood (after a nap), S&R had taken matters into their own hands and had already moved the ewes. It was rather dear, actually; I had brought over a large cooler to be modified for use as an insulated stock tank, which had necessitated me moving a dog crate from the bed to the cab of my truck temporarily. I would start to move the cooler or the dog crate and suddenly I'd be staring at my empty hands, thinking: "Wow, it just evaporated! How did THAT happen?" since S or R would have stepped in and quickly plucked the offending item from my grip, tsk-ing and telling me I didn't need to be doing THAT right now. They do take good care of me, I must say.... and at any rate, I was still too bemused by sleep deprivation and a faint narcotic echo to protest; by the time I could formulate any sort of demur, it was already too late: The job had been done.
So now I am looking forward with cautious optimism to the possibility of lambing in reasonable temperatures. The first calculated due date would be this coming Saturday, although normally you allow a fudge-factor of five days either direction, so it could be as early as NOW, or as late as next Thursday.
I used to feel like spring was here when I saw robins, or when the lilacs started to bloom. But any more, I feel like it's spring when the first lambs are on the ground, peering from behind their mothers' woolly flanks, gamboling about on their long cunning legs, shaking their little floppy ears, pronking about with the other lambs - of which, I sincerely hope, there will be many. The goats are due about the same time, so Wildwood will, if all goes well, be inundated with little four-legged babies starting in less than a week.
I love spring.
Up to now I've been skeptical. It has been SO cold this spring - following an unusually cold winter and an unusually cold summer the year before (which was in fact so freakishly cold that I didn't even attempt to garden... not even sweet basil, which grows for me as if nuclear-powered, and for which I have many uses and much demand). The weather was just so chilly and unpleasant that I couldn't bring myself to make the slightest attempt; I love my sweet basil plants and I would've felt like I was torturing them, trying to get them to grow in that weather. Even arugula - which grows like a weed - would have been faint and timid in the chill. And attempting tomato plants would have been cruel and unusual punishment. At any rate, as a result of all this, I feel like I've had winter for about the last 19 months.
Mind you, I love my winters. But even I don't love them 12 months a year. I don't tolerate hot muggy weather very well (despite the fact that I used to make my living grooming racehorses on the east coast, where hot and muggy are de rigeur. Somehow I managed not just to tolerate that, but to tolerate it whilst doing a manual labor job 50 hours a week. Don't even ask me.) I spent most of my youth in Colorado, where the summers are often quite hot, although very rarely are they muggy even for a short period of time. I'm no longer accustomed even to that, however.... since moving to Alaska I've grown used to cooler summers. Nowadays, I (and many of my cohorts up here) have been known to whine and complain if the temperature approaches 80 degrees. My friends still in Colorado (when coaxing me to visit) are inclined to try to tempt me down by saying, "But it's a dry heat." To which I usually reply, "So's the inside of my oven, but you don't catch me wanting to spend the summer in there, either."
At any rate, you know it's bad when I, of all people, am craving some hot weather. But here I am, wishing it would pop up 30 degrees over night and stay there until fall. I assure you I never have such thoughts - but this year, I catch myself thinking this all the time. It's very strange.
However, this week there has been a wee glimmer of hope. All last week - and early this week - I had temps 20 to 25 degrees colder than normal at night (and only slightly less unseasonable in the daytime). But in the last few days - and I hesitate to mention this, lest I jinx it - the night time temps have been nearly normal. All afternoon I've been hearing loud thuds as the ice accumulated on my roof is finally starting to slide and fall. Yesterday afternoon, coming home from work, I drove with my window rolled down. The air had a round, fresh, balmy feel, tender and sweet as a ripe peach, as if we might in fact experience spring this year after all. In addition to which - and here I know you'll think I'm being rash - I am starting to hope that my lambs won't instantly flash-freeze as they are being born.
There's still snow on the ground, of course, but Sunday we rotated the ewes to their lambing pen, in which there is a nice barn for them to birth in. By "we" I really mean S&R, since I spent the wee hours of Sunday morning in the ER having a kidney stone, and S&R were pretty certain that I didn't need to be trying to help. Apparently the combination of exhaustion and a dilaudid hangover combined to make me sound truly alarming on the phone, so by the time I got over to Wildwood (after a nap), S&R had taken matters into their own hands and had already moved the ewes. It was rather dear, actually; I had brought over a large cooler to be modified for use as an insulated stock tank, which had necessitated me moving a dog crate from the bed to the cab of my truck temporarily. I would start to move the cooler or the dog crate and suddenly I'd be staring at my empty hands, thinking: "Wow, it just evaporated! How did THAT happen?" since S or R would have stepped in and quickly plucked the offending item from my grip, tsk-ing and telling me I didn't need to be doing THAT right now. They do take good care of me, I must say.... and at any rate, I was still too bemused by sleep deprivation and a faint narcotic echo to protest; by the time I could formulate any sort of demur, it was already too late: The job had been done.
So now I am looking forward with cautious optimism to the possibility of lambing in reasonable temperatures. The first calculated due date would be this coming Saturday, although normally you allow a fudge-factor of five days either direction, so it could be as early as NOW, or as late as next Thursday.
I used to feel like spring was here when I saw robins, or when the lilacs started to bloom. But any more, I feel like it's spring when the first lambs are on the ground, peering from behind their mothers' woolly flanks, gamboling about on their long cunning legs, shaking their little floppy ears, pronking about with the other lambs - of which, I sincerely hope, there will be many. The goats are due about the same time, so Wildwood will, if all goes well, be inundated with little four-legged babies starting in less than a week.
I love spring.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Snow Falling in Winter
[Author's Note: Okay. I admit it. This blog entry is really just an excuse to post a lot of pictures.]
So we got a biiiig lovely snowstorm the other day. This is not earth-shattering news, of course, but it WAS rather pretty. Unfortunately, it did cause some injuries to the dogs....
Pepper has no legs either!
Spruce shedding snow
... and in the breeze, 30 seconds later.
The Cessna before....
... during....
... having the extremely accurate "arm gauge" snow-depth measurement....
... and after excavation. (The wings aren't black and wrinkly. Those are wing covers.)
The fact of it is that on a warm day like that, with the snow falling thick and pretty and the light all diffuse and softly glowing, as if it comes both from nowhere and from everywhere at once, it is really rather a pleasant thing to go brush the snow off the Cessna. It's like painting in reverse: you load your brush with white to reveal the vibrant glossy red of the bird. Apart from which, the dogs are entertaining; they're highly excited by all the snow being brushed off the plane, and God forbid you should set down your gloves or your whisk broom. Those are obviously HIGH VALUE TOYS, since you are playing with them and denying them to the dogs. The minute you turn your back, they're suddenly borne away in the jaws of some Border collie. The only downside, from the dogs' point of view, of spending an afternoon this way is that when it is warm and snowy (and by warm I mean 30 degrees), there's a tendency for ice to accumulate between their toes.
Finn! Look at your feet! You have ice balls!
AAAAAHHHHH!!! Ali has no legs!
Pepper has no legs either!Armless legless dogs!
Finn has no legs and an alien stuck to his butt! (I would say "Run away! Run away!" but clearly it is NOT POSSIBLE ANY MORE!)
Apart from the carnage of the armless legless dogs, it was really quite pretty. Relatively warm, with big lacy flakes falling softly through a diffuse pearly light. Every so often a breath of a breeze whispered through, dislodging the heavy mantling of snow from the trees and making tiny local blizzards.
Spruce shedding snowD's house in the calm...
... and in the breeze, 30 seconds later.The snow fell all day like this. Just as the storm began to wane, D called to let me know that he had a lot of snow to brush off the Cessna, and invited me to come over, bring a dog, and keep him company (and help excavate the plane, if I so desired.) Here it is, tied down on the lake.
The Cessna before....... during.... ... having the extremely accurate "arm gauge" snow-depth measurement.... ... and after excavation. (The wings aren't black and wrinkly. Those are wing covers.)The fact of it is that on a warm day like that, with the snow falling thick and pretty and the light all diffuse and softly glowing, as if it comes both from nowhere and from everywhere at once, it is really rather a pleasant thing to go brush the snow off the Cessna. It's like painting in reverse: you load your brush with white to reveal the vibrant glossy red of the bird. Apart from which, the dogs are entertaining; they're highly excited by all the snow being brushed off the plane, and God forbid you should set down your gloves or your whisk broom. Those are obviously HIGH VALUE TOYS, since you are playing with them and denying them to the dogs. The minute you turn your back, they're suddenly borne away in the jaws of some Border collie. The only downside, from the dogs' point of view, of spending an afternoon this way is that when it is warm and snowy (and by warm I mean 30 degrees), there's a tendency for ice to accumulate between their toes.
Finn! Look at your feet! You have ice balls!Dude! I WOULD, except you neutered me, remember?
After all this, of course, the best thing in the world is to go inside, have something hot to drink, and watch an old Cary Grant movie (with popcorn, naturally.)
I don't know; somehow, it seems that there's nothing like a heavy snowfall to make the simple pleasures of life seem like the most decadent of luxuries.
Maybe it's just me.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
White New Year's
To no one's surprise, I'm sure, we had a white Christmas up here. Not only was there good snow on the ground, snow was actually falling on Christmas day. SO pretty.
All things considered, it's unlikley to be a restful night, even with a diazepam assist for the dogs; people are likely to go even crazier than usual, since it's the 50th anniversary of Alaska's Statehood. We're unlikely to get to sleep before one in the morning, if we're lucky. The next morning, we'll be trying to sleep in (calls permitting); it's likely to be a bit cold for skiing, and besides, I have to stay within striking distance of my truck for the on-call duties. We usually get to sleep in at least a little on New Year's; the people who stay in have been watching their dogs and keeping them home, for the most part and don't need me; the people who went out and partied, on the other hand, are all hung-over or tired and hence sleeping in. If all goes well - and no one needs my help - we'll be cozying up in our little house, tying to stay warm and wishing everyone all good blessings in 2009.
The snow kept up til Boxing Day, when I went back to work; fortunately my plow guy had been and gone; I'd have been surfing my truck backwards in snow up to the bumper otherwise. The truck on the left has not been shovelled out and is sitting on bare ground under all the snow (this is my "extra" truck, which I should probably find a home for, although it is almost old enough to order its own drinks if I took it to a bar.) The truck on the right is the one I drive; it's not really higher clearance than the other one, it's just sitting up on the snow pack.
Sunday the wind started; it knocked all the pretty snow off the branches and dropped the chill factor into the below-zero range. I tried to take pictures of the pine grosbeaks; it's tough to get a clear focus when the branches are swaying in the breeze. It's also tough with the wind numbing your fingers to the stiff-and-clumsy level and making you shiver so hard your whole body is shaking hard enough to clack your teeth together (hence the imperfect focus, sorry about that.)
Sunday the wind started; it knocked all the pretty snow off the branches and dropped the chill factor into the below-zero range. I tried to take pictures of the pine grosbeaks; it's tough to get a clear focus when the branches are swaying in the breeze. It's also tough with the wind numbing your fingers to the stiff-and-clumsy level and making you shiver so hard your whole body is shaking hard enough to clack your teeth together (hence the imperfect focus, sorry about that.)Monday driving to work was interesting: all that beautiful snow on the ground, now being driven across the roads. Some places it becomes a low, fast-flowing river across the road, swift and opaque, obliterating all signs of the road itself. There you have to guess where the lanes are, where the shoulders are, where the pavement edges break off into the ditches. Some places it eddies in whirling snow-devil funnels, glittering and brilliant in the headlights. Some places it is flung thick and hard into the air, giant billowing sails of it, now hiding the oncoming traffic from view, now drawing aside its curtain of sparkling white to reveal the headlights in the other lane. Some places your best hope of avoiding a crash is to follow the red glow of the tail lights on the vehicle ahead of you. Some places you can't see beyond your own hood, let alone to the tail lights ahead of you.
For fun, in the places where the wind hits hard, driving the snow up to hiss and scour like sand against your windows, it also grabs your truck and bounces it around, tugging it fitfully toward the ditches and rocking it on its suspension.
Kind of makes you happy to get to work, you know?
The wind is gone now, but it's a good 25 degrees colder than normal for the time of year. One of my clients reported - as I was standing on tip-toes in the icy parking lot, trying to reach high enough up into his dog boxes to vaccinate his sled dogs - that he had 39 degrees (F) below zero at his house this morning. I feel like a piker: I had a balmy six degrees. (I even plugged my truck in last night. What a wimp.)
It looks like it will be cold and clear at the turn of the year; all the better to view the planetary conjunction that I hear will be occurring that afternoon (or night, I presume, for people in the lower 48). I'm on call New Year's Day, so I plan to have a quiet New Year's Eve at home, stuffing diazepam in to my dogs; two of them, plus the BFs' dog, have fireworks phobias, and we always have a lot of those on New Year's Eve. We kinda get screwed on the July 4th fireworks, as it isn't really dark enough to enjoy them, so people go nuts at New Year's. I live on a lake, so every last echo rolls across the ice to the waiting ears of my pooches. On the plus side, I get a great show (for free), and the one dog who isn't troubled by the noise runs from window to window looking for the best display.
All things considered, it's unlikley to be a restful night, even with a diazepam assist for the dogs; people are likely to go even crazier than usual, since it's the 50th anniversary of Alaska's Statehood. We're unlikely to get to sleep before one in the morning, if we're lucky. The next morning, we'll be trying to sleep in (calls permitting); it's likely to be a bit cold for skiing, and besides, I have to stay within striking distance of my truck for the on-call duties. We usually get to sleep in at least a little on New Year's; the people who stay in have been watching their dogs and keeping them home, for the most part and don't need me; the people who went out and partied, on the other hand, are all hung-over or tired and hence sleeping in. If all goes well - and no one needs my help - we'll be cozying up in our little house, tying to stay warm and wishing everyone all good blessings in 2009.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
In The Deep Freeze
It's been cold here. [Yes, I KNOW, it's December in Alaska, what did I expect, ha ha, very amusing.] I don't mean regular seasonable cold. I mean, colder than usual for the time of year. Those lying meteorologists keep promising us normal daytime temps (low to mid 20's) and standard nighttime temps (mid teens.) But what do we get? Some days our high temp doesn't break zero (although yesterday morning it was a balmy 3 degrees). This is more like January weather: clear, cold, very dry. I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't keep lying to us about it.
It goes like this:
Sigh.
Another thing that's nice about the very cold weather is that every available molecule of water precipitates out onto some object. This makes for some pretty trees. It also means that should you be so foolish as to inhale while you are outside, your nostrils will immediately stick together, effectively gluing your nose shut (at least until it starts to run, at which time you will again be able to breathe through your nose. Although you may not want to.)
Mind you, when it's clear, it's sunny, so the cold does have its compensations. But the dogs don't want to be out in it for any length of time. Can't say I blame them, especially my lurcher, Ali Babba, who is the next thing to bald (having unfortunately inherited his fence-jumping whippet father's nearly-absent coat, rather than his imported Scottish BC mother's weather-resistant rough coat). I have bought Ali several dog coats in different designs. This is not easy, mind you, since Ali has a mighty deep keel and a wasp-waist that would be the envy of any corseted Victorian miss. Finding something that will accommodate his deep chest but not hang down so low that he would be walking up the inside of the hem as it droops to the ground is quite a challenge - but I managed it, more than once, and have purchased several nice examples, some fleece, some knit, one like a tiny horse blanket with a weather-resistant canvas outside and an imitation shearling inside. Unfortunately, I have discovered that all of them induce instantaneous paralysis.
It goes like this:
1. Pick up coat
2. Call Ali over
3. Chase Ali up the stairs and under the bed, where he is hiding because you have A COAT!
4. Hide coat under comforter
5. Coax Ali out
6. Get a death grip on his collar
7. Apply coat gently and with much praise
8. Release collar
9. Observe look of stark terror in eyes
10. Attempt to coax dog to move
11. Fail completely
12. Remove coat
13. Observe miraculous recovery.
Sigh.
All right, then, you have no one to blame but yourself if you freeze to death in the 0.9 seconds it takes you to run out, pee, and run back in (all at top whippet speed).
Another thing that's nice about the very cold weather is that every available molecule of water precipitates out onto some object. This makes for some pretty trees. It also means that should you be so foolish as to inhale while you are outside, your nostrils will immediately stick together, effectively gluing your nose shut (at least until it starts to run, at which time you will again be able to breathe through your nose. Although you may not want to.)
(All the above shots were conveniently taken from my balcony, so I don't have to put on shoes or bundle up to get them.)
I will admit we did have snow a few days ago. This was the sunrise (taken about 9:45 from the back step of the clinic):
By noon, we had this:
The dogs, of course, love when it's snowing, because it means it's considerably warmer and they can romp around and play. Or else stare quizzically at me, wondering if I am ever going to THROW something for them to chase.
By noon, we had this:
The dogs, of course, love when it's snowing, because it means it's considerably warmer and they can romp around and play. Or else stare quizzically at me, wondering if I am ever going to THROW something for them to chase.
Finn:
Kenzie (in her winter "do", cosmetically inferior but thermally superior to the trimmed-up and jaunty look of summer), with Ali Babba head in the foreground:
Of course Ali has bigger concerns... because is that a fabric Frisbee in my hand, or could it perhaps be a cleverly disguised COAT?!?
Oh, okay. It's a Frisbee after all. The world is safe once more. All's well that ends well. Still, it pays to be alert, especially when one lives with a coat-wielding maniac. Because you never know when you'll have to go streaking off into the sunset to avoid her evil plans to keep you from flash-freezing yourself into a little black and white dog-sicle.
You can't trust her an inch.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Slip-Sliding Away
It's a grey morning here in the Greatland, a foot of snow on the ground and the air raw and wet with threatened rain. Now, being of Scottish descent, I love rain; I just don't love it in December and January, when it makes my steep driveway at times completely impassible, even with the hubs locked and studs on. I love where my house sits - on small ridge overlooking the lake, with spectacular views of the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains - but the downside is my driveway. It's long, and while it enters the property on the level, it takes a U-turn about halfway and goes immediately up the hill. The first part of the hill is rather steep, which means that you want some momentum, but the U-turn is pretty much a hairpin, which means that you're of necessity going kind of slow. This is normally not a problem to negotiate; in fact, in my old truck I had mastered the art of doing a deliberate fish-tail at the U, revving it in the turn, letting the rear end of my truck skid sideways and fetch up against the snow berm, so that the instant the side-slip stopped and the right rear tire was at the far edge of the ice, my momentum, combined with the RPMs and the small slice of traction at the verge of the snow berm, would conspire to get me past the steepest part of the hill. The new truck, which has a locking rear wheel differential, does not perform this maneuver (although it has many advantages over the old truck, not least of which being that it is 18 years younger.)
However, there have been times when I've come home to find literal sheets of water rolling down the ice on the steep part of the drive, ripples gleaming in my headlights as the rain falls, diamond-bright through my high-beams. This is a daunting sight. It means that I am highly unlikely to make it up the driveway in the truck, which would be no big deal except that A) whatever I need to take into the house I have to now carry up the drive, and B) if the truck in 4-wheel drive with good studded snow tires on it can't make it up the slippery hill, I'm not going to have a much better time of it on foot, being as how I have only two wheel drive myself, have no studded snow tires, and am carrying an undisclosed number and weight of items in my hands.
Usually I'll make the attempt with the truck; having failed the first time to pass the steep bit, I'll have allowed the truck to slide back down. I'll back it up as far as I can against the snow berm (there are trees behind that, so there's only so far I can go) and try to aim her as strait up the drive as I can, if possible grabbing a little traction from the rougher ice at the plowed edge where the berm starts. From experience I know that I may manage, after two or three failed attempts, to hit it just right and, by pushing the revs, crest the worst of the steep to where the drive starts to level out a little and the laws of physics are again on my side.
One night a few years ago I came home to the cascading water rolling down my driveway. I'd known I would find that on getting home - it had been raining hard for a few hours and I'd been watching the water pour down the sloped back driveway at work - but all the same, it was a bit daunting. I was tired after a long day, and disinclined to make three trips to carry my groceries (purchased at lunchtime in the foolish optimism that it wasn't going to rain, since at that time it was only 26 degrees) into the house. But along came a storm front heavy with moisture and warmer temps, with the result that I was sitting in my truck, worn from the day, looking through the sweep of the windshield wipers at my own personal Waterloo.
I tried it. Three times I made it almost to the break-even point, but had to put in the clutch and step on the brake, letting the truck slither backwards down the hill with as much control as I could give it. On the fourth attempt I fishtailed so badly that the truck was sliding sideways down the hill, a move that prompted me to start thinking about roll-overs (which would kind of wreck my day, not to mention my truck, besides which - and here put on your surprised faces - I thought it might somewhat inhibit my morning commute the following day.)
Bowing to the inevitable, I let the truck slide side-on to the end-of-the-U-turn berm and managed, maneuvering gingerly, to park it in a position where I hoped it would not start to slide on its own. The lake edge is mere feet from the edge of the drive, and if the truck started to slide, momentum might carry it further over the berm than I would like, potentially even onto the lake itself. It wouldn't likely go through the ice - which is thick enough at that time of year, despite the rain, to be just another parking lot - but I couldn't picture being able to get it back up off the ice without some kind of major help. Even presuming that it stayed upright on its tires.
I gathered what items could not be left in the truck overnight and stepped with extreme caution onto the ice. It was every bit as slippery as I had expected, and my boots skidded incessantly as I shuffled my way carefully to the front of the truck, using its bulk as a bolster to help me keep my feet. I managed to get into the snow berm without falling flat on my back, and after that it went a bit better; the berm, usually so hard-packed that even the snow plows sometimes struggle with it, was soft with rain, but it provided the traction necessary to get me up the hill on my own two snow-booted feet.
Big sigh of relief. Put away perishables and let dogs out, then in to shake their wet coats all over me and eat their dinners. Make something to eat and hope optimistically that the rain will stop and everything will be better in the morning. Carefully avoid wondering how the hell I will make it down the steep part of the driveway in the morning if it doesn't.
Which it doesn't.
In the morning it is still raining steadily. Not enough, unfortunately, to have eroded all the way through the ice on the driveway. From my window I can still see the pale gleam of the ice in the reflected light from the house. Sigh.
I gather my lunch and a paperback to read while I eat, and I go down onto the ice, which is visibly running with water. I stick to the berm nearest the house, which will get me to the front of the truck without having to twice cross the ice on slopes without any support. The driveway is bordered by a steep up-sloping embankment on the near side, as it is cut into the hill upon which I live. The berm is slushy with rain and collapsing under my feet. For the first little bit I have willow scrub to hang onto, and the going isn't bad; it's the shallowest part of the slope and the willows have protected the berm a bit. All is going as planned, even when I get to the steep part of the slope.
For a while.
About a third of the way along the steep, the berm is collapsing faster than I am walking. I am side-stepping up the hill, reaching for better snow, still moving forward, hoping to outpace the berm collapse. If I can just get past this section, there are more willows to help me out and then I'm at the truck, home and dry. I'm golden for about five steps... and then my right boot hits the ice.
Now I have no chance whatsoever. The laws of physics are now against me, since there is zero friction on the water-slick ice. The weakened berm has no more strength than a wet paper towel, and collapses under my left boot, which follows the right in a graceful arc onto the ice, sliding sideways like a skier in a tight slalom turn. My left knee skims side-down onto the ice, and then my left hip. In the speed-of-light way of thought, my brain is racing ahead, estimating that if I slide as I am aimed I will hit my truck amidships, either going underneath it, or fetching up against a tire. I am afraid to do either, since I'm afraid I will get hung up under the truck, or the impact of hitting a tire might jostle the truck into sliding toward the lake, or both (a very untempting option.) There's nothing to do but try to steer. I twist up onto my seat (in the 3 milliseconds it has taken for all that to go through my mind) and lean, changing my course and aiming my feet behind the truck. At the last second I twist slightly onto my side so that my feet hit the berm pointed 45 degrees to the left, allowing me to bend my knees to take the impact and throwing an artistic arc of water glittering into the air.
I realize I am laughing, laughing like you do when you're on a really great roller coaster, laughing like you do when you're hand-galloping a horse going just a little faster than feels safe. I am also soaked, not just wet, but wringing wet, with ice-cold water. I get to my feet. My lunch and my paperback have both escaped my grasp on the way down, and have come to rest along the berm, about a third of the way up the steep. I debate, but end up going up to retrieve them, using the willows on the lower third of the drive to help me and crawling on all fours when I get to the steep part (what the hell, I can't get much wetter). I think about changing clothes, but can't envision getting to the truck any drier than I am now. I think about sliding back down on my seat, since I am still laughing to myself, and it WAS fun; but in the end I just use the willows and extreme caution.
I laughed all the way to work, little fugitive chuckles bubbling out of me unexpectedly as I drove the rain-wet (but luckily not icy) streets. I was a bit damp and squishy, but I was mostly dry by noon, and in all it wasn't a bad experience. I get a good laugh out of it even now. Which brings me to today, when I have to put up 25 bales of hay for the sheep. Because I just heard the faint rattle of rain hitting my windows and my driveway is just as steep as ever. Not to mention the fact that the farm has a bit of a slope I have to negotiate to go up to it (as it is also situated on a hill), and - just to make things easier - the sheep (and their hay barn) are at the bottom of that hill on the back side. The side with the steepest slope and the deepest snow. Yee-hah. This ought to be fun.
As it happens, my hay supplier, JW, is also the person who plows (and sands) my driveway. She's a bit late getting to the farm, as she has thought ahead and asked her husband to precede her up the driveway in the sanding truck. That means we only have to off-load the hay from the truck to the 6-wheeler, 5 bales at a time, which R will then drive down the hill to the hay barn to be stacked. Only it turns out that Mr. W thinks he can drive the truck down there and - and here's the big feat - get it back up again. Well, okay, then. That's easier for US, but I'm dearly hoping he has not overestimated his driving skills or his truck. The snow is deep and wet in the falling drizzle, and it would be all too easy to mire down back there.
We offload the hay and stack it in the barn (and THAT'S a lovely feeling, let me tell you, having a barn full of hay for your stock). Mr. W turns his truck around and makes a run at it. And mires down, tires churning, about a third of the way up. He backs it up and makes another run at it. We are all - S, R, me, and JW - watching as he mires in a second time, and a third.
"He's packing himself a trail," JW says suddenly, grasping what her husband is up to. And she is right, as his fourth try takes the truck, straining and flinging clumps of heavy snow off its tires, up to the top. We all cheer and trudge through the heavy snow up in his wake, and I pay JW for hay - and for sanding, if her husband will go on over and do my drive. He will, a thought that makes me feel completely content with the world, although he has another drive or two to do before me. I have a barn full of hay, my sheep are snug and have food against the winter, and if I dawdle long enough, I will be able to get up my driveway when I get home. JW improves my good mood by giving me a tub of home-made hot buttered rum mix (which I can tell you, from experience, is excellent). She trundles off in her husband's wake, and I chat with S and R for a few minutes in hopes of letting Mr. W get ahead of me in his sanding truck, but they have a tub of hot buttered rum mix of their own, and a sudden driving need to go buy rum and fire up their hot tub. So I get into my truck and drive home. I turn into my ice-white drive but when I get to the slippery part, it looks like a dirt road. Mr. W, bless him, has been and gone, and my truck doesn't even hesitate as it climbs up the hill.
So now I'm sitting here, a mug of hot buttered brandy (since I don't like rum) close to hand, looking out at the fading day. Winter has its compensations - many of them, for me, as I like the cold weather and the snow, and I don't particularly mind the dark. One of the best is the fact that, as satisfying as it is to put up hay for your stock, it is that much MORE satisfying to do it against the brunt of winter. Even better to have been working outside in the cold, and to come in to a cozy house to sit with a border collie draped across your feet, watching the leaden sky fade to a smoky lavender as you work on your computer, hot drink to hand.
Kinda puts the slippery driveway blues into perspective, don't you think?
However, there have been times when I've come home to find literal sheets of water rolling down the ice on the steep part of the drive, ripples gleaming in my headlights as the rain falls, diamond-bright through my high-beams. This is a daunting sight. It means that I am highly unlikely to make it up the driveway in the truck, which would be no big deal except that A) whatever I need to take into the house I have to now carry up the drive, and B) if the truck in 4-wheel drive with good studded snow tires on it can't make it up the slippery hill, I'm not going to have a much better time of it on foot, being as how I have only two wheel drive myself, have no studded snow tires, and am carrying an undisclosed number and weight of items in my hands.
Usually I'll make the attempt with the truck; having failed the first time to pass the steep bit, I'll have allowed the truck to slide back down. I'll back it up as far as I can against the snow berm (there are trees behind that, so there's only so far I can go) and try to aim her as strait up the drive as I can, if possible grabbing a little traction from the rougher ice at the plowed edge where the berm starts. From experience I know that I may manage, after two or three failed attempts, to hit it just right and, by pushing the revs, crest the worst of the steep to where the drive starts to level out a little and the laws of physics are again on my side.
One night a few years ago I came home to the cascading water rolling down my driveway. I'd known I would find that on getting home - it had been raining hard for a few hours and I'd been watching the water pour down the sloped back driveway at work - but all the same, it was a bit daunting. I was tired after a long day, and disinclined to make three trips to carry my groceries (purchased at lunchtime in the foolish optimism that it wasn't going to rain, since at that time it was only 26 degrees) into the house. But along came a storm front heavy with moisture and warmer temps, with the result that I was sitting in my truck, worn from the day, looking through the sweep of the windshield wipers at my own personal Waterloo.
I tried it. Three times I made it almost to the break-even point, but had to put in the clutch and step on the brake, letting the truck slither backwards down the hill with as much control as I could give it. On the fourth attempt I fishtailed so badly that the truck was sliding sideways down the hill, a move that prompted me to start thinking about roll-overs (which would kind of wreck my day, not to mention my truck, besides which - and here put on your surprised faces - I thought it might somewhat inhibit my morning commute the following day.)
Bowing to the inevitable, I let the truck slide side-on to the end-of-the-U-turn berm and managed, maneuvering gingerly, to park it in a position where I hoped it would not start to slide on its own. The lake edge is mere feet from the edge of the drive, and if the truck started to slide, momentum might carry it further over the berm than I would like, potentially even onto the lake itself. It wouldn't likely go through the ice - which is thick enough at that time of year, despite the rain, to be just another parking lot - but I couldn't picture being able to get it back up off the ice without some kind of major help. Even presuming that it stayed upright on its tires.
I gathered what items could not be left in the truck overnight and stepped with extreme caution onto the ice. It was every bit as slippery as I had expected, and my boots skidded incessantly as I shuffled my way carefully to the front of the truck, using its bulk as a bolster to help me keep my feet. I managed to get into the snow berm without falling flat on my back, and after that it went a bit better; the berm, usually so hard-packed that even the snow plows sometimes struggle with it, was soft with rain, but it provided the traction necessary to get me up the hill on my own two snow-booted feet.
Big sigh of relief. Put away perishables and let dogs out, then in to shake their wet coats all over me and eat their dinners. Make something to eat and hope optimistically that the rain will stop and everything will be better in the morning. Carefully avoid wondering how the hell I will make it down the steep part of the driveway in the morning if it doesn't.
Which it doesn't.
In the morning it is still raining steadily. Not enough, unfortunately, to have eroded all the way through the ice on the driveway. From my window I can still see the pale gleam of the ice in the reflected light from the house. Sigh.
I gather my lunch and a paperback to read while I eat, and I go down onto the ice, which is visibly running with water. I stick to the berm nearest the house, which will get me to the front of the truck without having to twice cross the ice on slopes without any support. The driveway is bordered by a steep up-sloping embankment on the near side, as it is cut into the hill upon which I live. The berm is slushy with rain and collapsing under my feet. For the first little bit I have willow scrub to hang onto, and the going isn't bad; it's the shallowest part of the slope and the willows have protected the berm a bit. All is going as planned, even when I get to the steep part of the slope.
For a while.
About a third of the way along the steep, the berm is collapsing faster than I am walking. I am side-stepping up the hill, reaching for better snow, still moving forward, hoping to outpace the berm collapse. If I can just get past this section, there are more willows to help me out and then I'm at the truck, home and dry. I'm golden for about five steps... and then my right boot hits the ice.
Now I have no chance whatsoever. The laws of physics are now against me, since there is zero friction on the water-slick ice. The weakened berm has no more strength than a wet paper towel, and collapses under my left boot, which follows the right in a graceful arc onto the ice, sliding sideways like a skier in a tight slalom turn. My left knee skims side-down onto the ice, and then my left hip. In the speed-of-light way of thought, my brain is racing ahead, estimating that if I slide as I am aimed I will hit my truck amidships, either going underneath it, or fetching up against a tire. I am afraid to do either, since I'm afraid I will get hung up under the truck, or the impact of hitting a tire might jostle the truck into sliding toward the lake, or both (a very untempting option.) There's nothing to do but try to steer. I twist up onto my seat (in the 3 milliseconds it has taken for all that to go through my mind) and lean, changing my course and aiming my feet behind the truck. At the last second I twist slightly onto my side so that my feet hit the berm pointed 45 degrees to the left, allowing me to bend my knees to take the impact and throwing an artistic arc of water glittering into the air.
I realize I am laughing, laughing like you do when you're on a really great roller coaster, laughing like you do when you're hand-galloping a horse going just a little faster than feels safe. I am also soaked, not just wet, but wringing wet, with ice-cold water. I get to my feet. My lunch and my paperback have both escaped my grasp on the way down, and have come to rest along the berm, about a third of the way up the steep. I debate, but end up going up to retrieve them, using the willows on the lower third of the drive to help me and crawling on all fours when I get to the steep part (what the hell, I can't get much wetter). I think about changing clothes, but can't envision getting to the truck any drier than I am now. I think about sliding back down on my seat, since I am still laughing to myself, and it WAS fun; but in the end I just use the willows and extreme caution.
I laughed all the way to work, little fugitive chuckles bubbling out of me unexpectedly as I drove the rain-wet (but luckily not icy) streets. I was a bit damp and squishy, but I was mostly dry by noon, and in all it wasn't a bad experience. I get a good laugh out of it even now. Which brings me to today, when I have to put up 25 bales of hay for the sheep. Because I just heard the faint rattle of rain hitting my windows and my driveway is just as steep as ever. Not to mention the fact that the farm has a bit of a slope I have to negotiate to go up to it (as it is also situated on a hill), and - just to make things easier - the sheep (and their hay barn) are at the bottom of that hill on the back side. The side with the steepest slope and the deepest snow. Yee-hah. This ought to be fun.
As it happens, my hay supplier, JW, is also the person who plows (and sands) my driveway. She's a bit late getting to the farm, as she has thought ahead and asked her husband to precede her up the driveway in the sanding truck. That means we only have to off-load the hay from the truck to the 6-wheeler, 5 bales at a time, which R will then drive down the hill to the hay barn to be stacked. Only it turns out that Mr. W thinks he can drive the truck down there and - and here's the big feat - get it back up again. Well, okay, then. That's easier for US, but I'm dearly hoping he has not overestimated his driving skills or his truck. The snow is deep and wet in the falling drizzle, and it would be all too easy to mire down back there.
We offload the hay and stack it in the barn (and THAT'S a lovely feeling, let me tell you, having a barn full of hay for your stock). Mr. W turns his truck around and makes a run at it. And mires down, tires churning, about a third of the way up. He backs it up and makes another run at it. We are all - S, R, me, and JW - watching as he mires in a second time, and a third.
"He's packing himself a trail," JW says suddenly, grasping what her husband is up to. And she is right, as his fourth try takes the truck, straining and flinging clumps of heavy snow off its tires, up to the top. We all cheer and trudge through the heavy snow up in his wake, and I pay JW for hay - and for sanding, if her husband will go on over and do my drive. He will, a thought that makes me feel completely content with the world, although he has another drive or two to do before me. I have a barn full of hay, my sheep are snug and have food against the winter, and if I dawdle long enough, I will be able to get up my driveway when I get home. JW improves my good mood by giving me a tub of home-made hot buttered rum mix (which I can tell you, from experience, is excellent). She trundles off in her husband's wake, and I chat with S and R for a few minutes in hopes of letting Mr. W get ahead of me in his sanding truck, but they have a tub of hot buttered rum mix of their own, and a sudden driving need to go buy rum and fire up their hot tub. So I get into my truck and drive home. I turn into my ice-white drive but when I get to the slippery part, it looks like a dirt road. Mr. W, bless him, has been and gone, and my truck doesn't even hesitate as it climbs up the hill.
So now I'm sitting here, a mug of hot buttered brandy (since I don't like rum) close to hand, looking out at the fading day. Winter has its compensations - many of them, for me, as I like the cold weather and the snow, and I don't particularly mind the dark. One of the best is the fact that, as satisfying as it is to put up hay for your stock, it is that much MORE satisfying to do it against the brunt of winter. Even better to have been working outside in the cold, and to come in to a cozy house to sit with a border collie draped across your feet, watching the leaden sky fade to a smoky lavender as you work on your computer, hot drink to hand.
Kinda puts the slippery driveway blues into perspective, don't you think?
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