Today is Tuesday, November 5 as I am writing this. Paper goes to press in an hour, but, lacking inspiration for the editorial, I was taking the time to shovel the snow from my driveway, as were the neighbours on both sides.
“Little early for this,” opined Jerry as I shovelled a load of snow out onto my front yard.
“Just making up for last year,” I replied.
Last year, when it didn’t snow and stick in any levels of accumulation until…what? February?
Of course, November 4 is not the earliest its ever snowed and stayed. And there’s no guarantees that it will stay. Indeed, the temperature for Thursday—the day this will be delivered, barring any shipping errors (there have been times when the paper has wound up in Lloydminster, or Fort St John or points even farther away; my guess is someone at the shippers didn’t actually know where Tumbler Ridge was) is expected to plus ten and rain. Then minus ten and snow by the weekend. (One of my favourite memes is a shot of Ned Stark, with the line. “Winter is coming. No, wait. Warm again. Okay, it’s cold. Winter is com…nope, warm again.”
And that has been winter here in Tumbler Ridge for quite a while now. I remember back in the Tumbler Ridge News days we had a shot of Kevin Slaney wandering about downtown in shorts in January.
And maybe I’m just getting old, but winter? Isn’t what it used to be.
Or maybe, you know, climate change and all that rot. But you know that, even if the temperature hovers around zero for the next three months, the first day it hits -30, someone will make a post calling global warming a hoax.
That said, I don’t think this will be a “hovering around zero for the next three months” type year. Indeed, the current forecast is for a cold winter with lots of snow, your classic La Niña.
More snow is not a bad thing. Last year, we spent much of the year in drought conditions. This year has been the same. While you might disagree, more snow is good for the environment, and good for those of us who like to get out and play in the snow. Last year the ski trails were only groomed, what? Once? Twice? That’s not lack of interest on the part of the volunteers who do the job, but lack of snow. And when it did snow, it would last a few days at most before the sun came out and melted it all away.
Of course, that might not happen, either. That’s the joy of meteorological prognostication: once you get more than a few days out, it becomes difficult to predict with any accuracy.
Indeed, when conditions are volatile enough, it can be difficult to predict what will happen an hour out, let alone a day or two. The climate? Turns out there’s a lot of things affecting it, and it is impossible to factor in all those things in a single model. A butterfly flaps its wings, as they say.
Me? I’m hoping for a winter that settles in round about -10 and alternates between snow and blue sky days.
I know it’s considered de rigueur to dislike winter, but, as I have said here many times before, I like winter.
I like getting out and exploring places that take on a new, and different aspect in the winter. I can go back to places I’ve been to dozens of times before in summer and revel in the newfound beauty and stillness of the place.
One of the things I may or may not have mentioned in that past that recommends winter is the winter evenings.
It isn’t just the starry nights and better-than-average chance of spotting northern lights. After this year, winter northern lights better have a KP value of 8 or more to even rank.
No, one of the things I love about winter nights is the snow.
Duh.
No, I mean, the reflective quality of the snow. When I take my dogs out for a walk at 10 pm on a summer evening, the sky is still light and I can walk with impunity.
But over the last month, the days have been getting darker earlier. (Again, duh.) A couple weeks ago, I took the dogs out for a walk at seven pm and had to cut the walk short as it was getting too dark. A week later, going out at six risked getting back after dark. Now, the sun is setting at 5:11, on its way to the shortest day, when it will set at 4:29. But now that there’s snow? I can see after dark. It’s like I’m part elf or something.
And it’s not just nights when there’s a full moon. Sure, those days are almost magical in how bright they are, and I will frequently head out into the mountains for a midnight snowshoe, but even on days when it’s overcast the lights of the town reflect off the low-hanging clouds and illuminate the paths close to town.
And snow? Is quite lovely. Last night at two in the morning, I woke up to go to the bathroom and my dog, seeing I was up, decided he needed to go outside at the same time.
I opened up the door to let him out, then just stared out at the neighbourhood, transformed.
A light snow was falling, silver gradients caught in the streetlight. The neighbour’s tree was covered in a mantle of fresh fallen snow, nearly pure white against the slate gray sky beyond. It was two in the morning on a cloudy night, but the world lay before me revealed in the dim but all prevailing light of the street lights, reflected and refracted by snow and clouds.
I considered for a moment getting my camera, but I knew that it would be hard to capture that essence of that moment. The feeling of peace and comfort and … rightness in the world. That, as our neighbours to the south enter what might be one of the most contentious election days ever, as in BC our election drama continues with Elections BC discovering a box of ballots that went uncounted, that it’s okay. That, at least right here, right now, things are okay.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
