A Snoozy Doozy

I’m sitting in my cold apartment at the moment, unsure if I should turn the heat on or just relish in the myth that it’s too early in the season to turn the heat on.  It’s October, not January, after all.  Snow and cold and frozen tears don’t fall down quite yet.

Oh, right.  They do, they have.

If there’s one (or two or three) days a year when we can rekindle the flame on our snowy storms of years’ past, I suppose it can be today, and never again.  I don’t like to live in the blustery past just for the sake of remembering the storms we’ve endured could hit us again tomorrow.  But it’s the first anniversary of the surprise October storm and like everyone else here in town, I have vivid memories.

The above photo (not taken by me but found online by a fellow Buffalonian) paints a grizzly picture for our shorelines and front yards.  What an interesting perspective on what we never imagined receiving so early in the year.  If only we were more accustomed to looking out our windows toward the area where the water is (I’ll call it a waterfront when it is one), we’d see Old Man Winter knocking down our doors.

My “where I was when it hit story isn’t unlike any of yours:  I was at work downtown, thought, “oh crap, it’s snowing!” and drove home bummed out at best.  I got home and realized this was unlike a normal first snowfall.  Fast-forward to three-and-a-half weeks later, still no power and barely an ounce of a memory of what our backyard used to look like.  My neighborhood’s streets were drowning in the melted snow brought on by seasonably warm temperatures in the following days, but also in the arms and legs and shoulders and hands and necks of our green life that just dumped itself on our feet.  It was sad more than it was annoying; devastating more than it was tenuous.

But of course it was arduous and labor-intensive and sweaty and all of that too, to pick up our Redwood and Maple off the neighbor’s roof.  How embarrassing, and to think we didn’t even bring them muffins when they’d moved in just three months prior!

I won’t go on, because I could and I shouldn’t.  It was sad for more than the time it took out of our lives, and for the changes in scenery and environmental sustainability of our fair region.  It was sad because it was a kind of death we don’t normally encounter in life, and one that almost everyone experienced firsthand.  That’s the commonality I can find in it.  I’d like to remember that we can face it again if we remember, as the accompanying photo will remind us, that it can sneak up on us at any time.

Photo courtesy stephyannette.

Posted by on 10/13 at 03:36 PM