MAROONED

 It's got to the point where we no longer take it for granted that we can go to town any old time we please.  Just owning a truck and SUV, both in good repair and sporting suitable tires, or having a worthy grid road system going right past our place means very little when the snow is this deep and a restless prairie wind continually sifts it sideways into drifts.  I told you about our New Year's Eve walk?  Conditions haven't changed for the better.

I'm not going to compare our situation to what Atlantic Canada is getting at the moment.  They measure their snow fall in feet, not inches, and the winds that accompany their storms range in the 80 to 100 kph; it's a very rare prairie storm that will pack that kind of a wallop.  Their storms are massive, alright, but snow they get in December doesn't tend to be still sticking around in March.  On the prairies we keep ours around.  Our temperatures don't melt it.  Our only option is to pile it up - pushing it as far back from our driveway as possible because we know that there will be many more storms and we will need the space to push those snowfalls back too.

Meanwhile the winds play with the white stuff.  With every shift in direction the snow banks form different designs across the landscape.  It's really quite beautiful to watch and with the right play of sun and shadow, photographers can capture exquisite scenes.  If you are a nature watcher you would love it.  If you want to go to town, you might not be so impressed.

For example: yesterday morning I had decided to go to church.  No one had been out of the yard for 24 hours and the wind had been blowing the whole time from the west so I was pretty suspicious of our main gate out.  I backed out of the garage and played eeny meeny miney mo and decided to try the escape route instead.  Our yard has what my husband calls the 'bunny hole' referring to a back door escape hatch that rabbit holes have.  It leaves going south whereas the main gate faces west; depending on which way the wind is blowing from, if one is blocked the other one is probably passible.

It was tricky, but I made it out of the yard ... and was feeling quite accomplished until I got to the corner a mile from home and found the intersection almost completely filled in with drifted snow.  I debated my chances and decided to go for it - if I got stuck there it was only a mile walk home and I had brought my walking boots just in case.  I made it through but more than once during the church service I found myself wondering if I was going to be lucky enough to get home again.  I did, but when Glen came home six hours later in his big 4 wheel drive truck he said it was all he could do to get through.  When I mentioned this morning that I had a meeting in town tonight he just said he didn't know how I was going to get there.  I had forgotten we were marooned.

I have letters written by my grandmother before I was born talking about being totally snow locked by March one year because the route they used to get to main roads from their farm had blown in so solidly they had to wait for spring melt to be set free.  My father-in-law also tells the story of how when their first child was born Jan 30, 1945, the trip to the hospital was the last trip down highway 8 until spring.  In this day and age it seems unbelievable that a major highway would be shut down for months but I have no doubt his story is true.

It's mid February and quite often March is our snowiest month.  Anywhere (and there are lots of places) that the snow has blocked the roads the plows leave ridges when they pass.  Anywhere there are ridges the snow fills in even faster and harder the next time it blows.  These next six weeks could be interesting.