It’s snowing again in Boston. Again.
I know, I know. It’s kind of what’s expected right now, what with it being the darkest part of the year.
“January in the Northeast…would you expect anything less,” my friend Tracy quipped on Facebook, when I was complaining about how cold it's been.
Yet knowing something logically and processing it conceptually are two different things. This much snow and coldness has been hard for my brain, because it just runs counter to my entire view of the world.
For example, this past weekend I saw people out ice fishing…and my sister-in-law offered to take me walking across a frozen pond, just for the novelty of the experience. Um, I know ice fishing exists, but my brain is convinced that ponds are for swimming in, not for walking across. I am not Jesus.
Back when I was in graduate school, I remember having my thesis reader, Dr. Bob Jensen talking about how much he missed shoveling show. This past week, I shoveled snow for the very first time in my life. I’m beginning to think that Bob has some strange ideas.
On Saturday morning, I saw my brother-in-law Andrew chipping away at the giant ice dams on his roof, and cleaning some of the two foot of snow off of their roof. I had heard a rumor that icicles could actually get big enough that they’d really do some damage if they fell on you, but I’d certainly never seen such a thing!
In the last few days, I’ve also learned about something called a “snow farm.” Misleadingly, this isn’t where they grow snow. Rather it’s the place where old, sad unwanted snow is taken to die after it is scraped off the highways. I don’t know why they don’t call it a “snow morgue.”
