It Is Cold Out There

I am all cozy and snug in the condo.

This morning my computer informed me that it is minus 26. It has a little side notation "feels like minus 36". I have been a prairie girl long enough to know that this is a bunch of hooey because no one feels anything anymore at minus 36! YET as I watch the beautiful mist and steam rise from the river this cold morn, I see at least three groups of people running the river path. They must be crazy. Show offs.

When Jackie was in Grade 3 in Edmonton, she had a teacher who would wait for one of the coldest days of the winter. You know the one where those children who did show up to school are allowed to stay in all day because it is too cold to be out there. Anyway, this teacher would bundle up his class and parade them outside the school making a point of stopping at each set of school windows to show them that it wasn't cold for the 8 year old. I am sure that this teacher was one of these runners.

The cars below are chugging down the road.The whirling vortex of white exhaust tailing behind them leaving a trail of where they have been. It slowly disintegrates into the air as it is replaced by more exhaust from the following cars. I have travelled in bumper to bumper traffic whereby you felt you were in a whiteout due to the frigid exhaust. I have also travelled in a car in whiteout conditions where we opened the passenger door to follow the lines on the pavement. Not so fun.

Last month we had the joy of having Jackie's girlfriend stay with us. We drove to Banff. Along the way we stopped at Lac des Arc. The lake was frozen. There is something so cool about throwing stones on a frozen lake. She had never seen a frozen lake before. The concept was new to her. It never occurred to me that there are people who never seen a frozen lake. I am after all a prairie girl through and through.

A few years back, Alanna and I would walk to the river to throw rocks into it. We would do this in winter too. At this particular spot there was a built up of ice on the side bank. We would find rocks and throw them on the ice to hear the different tones it would make in different depths of the ice build up. It was interesting how hard it was to find the same tone twice. As an aside, the best place to throw rocks on a frozen lake is in the mountains where the echos bounce around until silenced. It is eerily beautiful.

My favorite cold winter phenomenon is "ice crystals" It is not cold enough for this today. However I have seen it many times over my years. The sun catches the crystals just right and it bursts into a sparkling flashes of light. The flashes of twinkling lights fall like snow. They surround you in all their glory and you feel like you are in the middle of stage lit with a million lights.

Jackie's girlfriend asked Jackie simply if it is so cold, why do we stay here. This is good question.
Maybe our brains have been frozen once too often. We most definitely have short term memory loss. Or maybe we have convinced ourselves that we needed an excuse to vacation in a tropical climate. What would we complain about if the weather was always warm?

It is a few days until Christmas and I don't have to wish for a "White Christmas". And that is why in the middle of this bleak winter day, I try to find the beauty of it all. I know this is not particularly Canadian. As Canadians, we tend to be cranky about our weather especially in winter. It is the water cooler topic of many a work day. We like to compare the forecasts we have heard on our various medias and blame the weatherman for our misery in this "God forsaken country".

Being a pessimistic soul, I have tried to find the silver lining in this cold winter day. I wouldn't trade the beauty of a white winter for all the sand on a warm beach.
I hope you find love, joy and peace in all that you see and do on this cold winter Christmas.

Wendy KH