I spent a while tonight shoveling snow, a ritual to which I have grown quite accustomed this winter. I made the arrogant mistake of pointing out to my wife one day last week, after a particularly satisfying session of excavating, that I enjoyed seeing all of our walks, and the backyard deck, and our driveway, clear of the snow cone-like mess that was left by a quick but sloppy storm.
It was a comfort to me to look out of my windows to see neatly shoveled paths to our bird feeder, to the barn and to my truck, which has to endure the harsh winter weather since only our car can fit into a garage made snug by the Fred Sanford-like clutter of recycling cans and filing cabinets and overflowing shelves.
But I have paid the price of such chutzpah; another cold front has curled its frigid fingers around the Midwest, and just last night we picked up nearly half-a-foot of powdery snow that this evening covers every track and trail and clear road that my plastic shovel and I had created on willpower and ibuprofen and a well-guarded back. Now, a new load of snow blankets the tops of fence posts, hangs precariously from the eaves of our barn and sits on the rocking chairs and old wooden storage trunk that reside on our porch, mocking the roof that they supposedly use for protection.
We have grown quite tired of the monotonously similar weather forecasts we hear: “Mostly cloudy,” the weathermen tell us day after day, “with a chance of snow.” In the not-so-long-ago old days, the two of us, both teachers in small, rural schools, delighted in those words, for we might enjoy a day off from work, a day we not only didn’t have to pay back, but also one in which we could sleep in a little.
But times have changed. We must now tone for our snow days under the illusion that we can keep our students’ attention in warmer, greener times, and I stew a little now in knowing that despite their both being adults, my two kids are driving in, rather than playing in, the stuff. It’s on days such as these decades ago that I used to be on my sled, racing down my cousins’ hill across the road from our house. I’d go inside only for a change of socks or gloves or scarf.
Yet, despite the labor it causes me now, I have grown friendly with our frequent snowfalls. I often shovel in the evenings under a crystalline sky, in the dying light that Rockwell Kent or Maxfield Parrish captured in watercolors. I watch my breath in regular smoky puffs and feel my face turn pleasantly numb, and despite an obvious lack of publicity on such matters, feel myself accomplishing something — a self-satisfying clearing and cleansing — one scoop of my shovel at a time.
I can now anticipate the places on my deck where the treated brown boards have raised up a little, a frozen swelling for which I have to adjust the angle of my shovel lest I punch myself in the stomach with its rigid handle. I have the odd shape of our deck planned out in my head, too, knowing that I can save a few trips down and back by cutting a corner here and there. It is near my back door that the snow nearly always blows off our roof to pile itself up in a most inconvenient spot, so my first shoveling task is always near there, for our cats’ bowls manifest a snow-removal priority, something like snow routes plowed first by the road crews.
In recent weeks, the snow has come in three varieties. There has been a powder that easily picks itself up and moves across our fields and closes our roads and reminds us all of Napoleon’s miserable army in retreat across Russia. There, too, is the snow we still can see crusted on the north sides of the trees like sprayed insulation on an industrial building’s ceiling. It was that snow a few weeks back that led me to check to be certain that my mailbox would open for a mailman already weary from a long morning of tugging and pulling.
There is also the wet, heavy snow, the self-packing kind that makes my shoveling real work. It is the kind that I know causes sore backs and coronaries in middle-aged men. I obviously try to avoid both maladies, so I set a fairly leisurely pace and rest often. My friend, Joe, tells me that I need an electric snow broom or gas-powered blower to clear away the mess, but for now, I still like the sound of my scraping shovel and crunching boots, and I do need the exercise this time of year.
In recent days, we have experienced a freezing fog that leaves our pine trees and woven wire and uncut ornamental grasses glazed like works of art. My woods remind me of a Dr. Zhivago-like wonderland, and despite knowing that it all melts away in a process that resembles a false snowfall, it is a beautiful thing to see, a natural freezer in need of a natural defrosting. I told my students in an early morning class a few days back that it was a real joy to be up early to see the sun cut a path into that splendid frosty air, and they looked at me as if I had volunteered to diffuse bombs or had claimed to have spotted a Yeti behind the house.
In her beautifully rendered, “February Twilight,” poet Sara Teasdale recounts a silent icicle of an evening when she “stood beside a hill/Smooth with new-laid snow. A single star looked out/From the cold evening glow.” I have been in a similar place quite frequently this winter. I enjoy my shoveling for the most part, but like her, it is the evening sky that keeps my attention most of all.
It is getting dark on me now, and I am tempted to grab that shovel and head out to the south side of our house to tackle a few inches of snow just left for us yesterday.
“Why don’t you wait,” my wife half-asks and half-tells me. “The weatherman says it’s going to stay cloudy, and there’s a good chance for snow.”
I have no doubt about that.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail C/O the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. He will be speaking and signing his books at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Indiana State on Thursday; the Clay County Historical Society on March 1; Psi Iota Xi meeting at the Vigo County Library on March 2; and at BookNation on March 5. Check for times and other presentations on Mike’s Web page at www.mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: The mostly cloudy with a chance of snow times have changed
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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Raw: Trucker Bumps I-5 Bridge Before Collapse
Suspect in Killing of Officer Found Dead in Cell
Raw: Texas Deputy Shot by Colo. Suspect Honored
Major Detours Following Wash. Bridge Collapse
American Held in Grisly Czech Murders
Raw: Jersey Shore Reopens for Summer
High Wire Spectacle Thrills Crowd in Austria
Today in History May 25
Officials: Tsarnaev Friend Linked to Slaying
Britain Braces for Possible Copycat Attacks
UK-bound Pakistan Plane Diverted, 2 Men Arrested
Bus Fire Kills 16 Children, Teacher in Pakistan
Raw Video: Washington State Bridge Collapse
Obama:Sexual Assault Threatens Trust in Military
Today in History May 24
ShowBiz Minute: Shelton, King, Lopez
Raw: Gay Rights Activists March in Ukraine
Johnson: Don't Blame Islam or UK Policy
Raw: Pakistan Election Results Protested
ShowBiz Minute: Pickler, Franklin, Potter
Raw: Apple 1 Computer Sells for More Than $650k
Young protestor goes viral on Youtube
Toronto Mayor says he's not a crack head
Maine island offers lighthouse getaway
Should We Prepare for Quakes?
Lynn Kindergarten Class Rescues Ducklings
Congressional gold medal awarded to civil rights heroes
Charles Ramsey visits Kentucky
Unique Display Greets Guests At Revel Casino
Cape Cod Train Service Worries Residents
BASE jumper rides snowmobile off cliff to honor dead friend
Bridge Collapse Survivor: 'Rough Day'
SHOCKING: School Guard Throws Girl Down Stairs
Star Wars X-Wing Star Fighter Made of Legos
Actress Amanda Bynes Arrested in New York
Singer Psy Has An Imposter
President Obama Heckled at National Security Speech
Morgan Freeman falls asleep on air
