Playing for Time

Our big snowstorm seems to have arrived.  Sitting here watching it come down, blow around, stick to everything, run down the windows, I’m remembering the huge blizzard we had when I was about ten years old.  If I have this right, it snowed for at least three days without let-up and the wind howled the entire time.  The power went out, of course, so my dad got kerosene lanterns from my grandparents’ house … I still remember what they smelled like when they were all lit.  Living on a farm, we were usually pretty well prepared for whatever might come up, so I’m guessing there was plenty of food in the house.  Anyway, I don’t remember going hungry.  And we had propane heat, so the house stayed cozy.

I do recall playing lots of board games and card games … and we probably drove our parents crazy … four kids under ten years old cooped up in the house for days and nights on end.  When the snow finally stopped and the wind died down, we emerged to find our world transformed … drifts up to twenty feet high with deep valleys between.  I have no idea what my dad did about the livestock while the storm was raging, but they must have survived somehow.

It was several days before the county could get through with blades to clear some of the roads, and a few more before we could make it to school.  The storm happened in March, so we ended up with a fabulous vacation out of it.  We spent our time exploring the new snowscape, in awe over the fact that our neighbors could walk out their upstairs windows onto the drifts.  Our grandparents’ orchard was one enormous playground, with drifts up to the tops of the tall cedar trees and plenty of big hills to slide down.  Our parents definitely got a break from the craziness … except, of course, for all the snow boots and wet jackets and gloves and mittens and stocking caps and …

Sadly, the heavy snow broke most of the cedars and fruit trees, and the orchard was never the same.  As kids, of course, the cost extracted by a storm like that didn’t register with us until much later.  We just knew it was the most amazing thing that had ever happened in our lives to that point.

Me with my two younger sisters atop the drifts in the orchard, with cedar tops peeking through.  Our little brother was in the house.