Saturday, December 15, 2007, 05:47
At the Speed of Light
I'm not sure where this past week has gone to -- or why it has seemed so hectic. Part of it was the five-hour county board meeting on Wednesday evening. The meeting was really a "sustainability" workshop given by an expert in conservation and being "green." Very interesting, but still tiring to sit for so long.
I had a book signing Thursday at a food co-op in town. I sold three copies of "Preserve Your Family History" and several copies of the other books. I had a chance to talk to lots of people. I didn't know any of them. But they were fun to talk to.
Thursday evening I covered a "kick-off" event for an ecocenter that's under development. The man who is working on it is a local business person who, I have heard, made millions when he sold his prototype business. It is located between a state recreation area and a state wildlife area, so it seems like it would be a good fit. His vision is to have an educational center where children can learn about wildlife and their habitat. Ultimately, he is hoping that the children and the adults who visit Wisconsin Arks will learn more about caring for Mother Earth.
This week I also officially resigned from my job at the newspaper. My last day will be December 28. I enjoy the work, but the hours are a real killer. So many days I work for four or five hours, but the time ends up being spread out over 15 hours. And I seem to end up with quite a few evening meetings. It gets kind of old after a while.
Saturday is going to be a hectic day, too. Well, both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning we are having a Sunday School Christmas program practice. There are only six kids in Sunday school, but many of them have not been there for more than one or two practices over the last month. It's a matter of dad having them one weekend and mom the other weekend, and many times, they just don't make it to Sunday school.
After the practice, Randy and I are driving three hours to his mom and dad's for Christmas with his family. We will drive back Saturday evening, and then Sunday morning is the Christmas program. By Sunday afternoon, I have a feeling I will be ready to collapse.
Guinevere is still hanging on. And she is still eating some canned kitty food every day. As I write this, she is stretched out by the heat vent underneath the kitchen table, sound asleep.
The kittens, Katerina, Henry and Dora, are growing and exploring more every day. Friday morning, Henry jumped up in the windowsill down in the basement. Katerina saw him and decided she wanted to get up there, too. Then they sat staring out at the cold, sunny world. It was six degrees below zero Fahrenheit Friday morning.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 02:49
Six Degrees
I made the mistake of adding up our average daily temperature for this past week.
It was 6.14 degrees Fahrenheit. But that's not counting the windchill. With the windchill, the average temperature was probably closer to 0 degrees Fahrenheit -- if not below zero.
The snow on the ground makes it more difficult for the temperature to warm up very much. The short days and the low angle of the sun do not help matters much, either. Then again, it's December, and it is, so far, a more "normal" December than we have had for many years, although I suppose that depends on your perspective. This December is more like the Decembers I remember from when I was a kid: cold and snowy.
As far as weather patterns go, maybe those Decembers were normal and maybe they were not. I think they probably were fairly normal, however, at least for a certain time period, because the 1940s and on -- up until the 1970s and maybe some of the 1980s -- were "snow" years around here.
When I was a kid, the snow would start at the end of November and would keep on until March. Snowmobile trails were everywhere, and by the late 1960s or early 70s, snowmobiles actually were a fairly popular mode of transportation. Extensive snowmobile trails ran from one town to the next. Snowmobile clubs cut miles of trails through the woods and worked during the summer to keep the trails brushed out. On the weekends, you could hear the whine of snowmobiles during the day and at night as people would wend their way along the trails. I know there were miles of trails because during the summer, I would ride them on horseback for hours.
Of course, since snowmobiles were used so much, accidents were more common as well. Two boys when I was in high school were killed in snowmobile accidents. One boy was in my grade and died in our freshmen year. The other boy was the younger brother of one of my classmates.
Not Much Left
You can only see faint vestiges of those snowmobile trails anymore now. Perhaps a spot in the woods here and there where the brush is not as thick as it is in the surrounding woods. Somewhere along the line, the snow just sort of petered out. Yes, it would still snow some in the winter, but not the many feet of snow that had fallen in previous years.
Snow removal equipment was not as big or as sophisticated then as it is now, but older folks remember that it took a week or more for road crews to clear roads in the more rural areas. And when the snow was finally cleared, they talk about being able to touch telephone wires from the tops of the piles along the road. Graders were used to clear the roads, and I think that maybe road graders have not changed that much over the years.
When I was growing up on our farm, it would snow so much that the only way we could get the driveway clear was to wait for the milk truck with the snowplow on the front of it. No one was going anywhere until the milk hauler had come to pick up our milk. Sure, Dad maybe could have cleared the driveway with the tractor and the loader, but it would have taken him a couple of hours. The milk truck could clear the driveway in just a few minutes.
I can only think of two snowstorms in the last 12 years around here that dumped enough snow that I would have been glad for a milk truck to clear the driveway. The first one was 11 years ago, and the second one was 2 years ago -- the March after we had gotten Isabelle. And it's a good thing we got a heavy snowfall out of that one storm, too. It just about all of the moisture we received for the spring season, and even at that, much of it probably ran off when it melted since the frost had gone down to 4 or 5 feet.
Tenacious
For the last three or four years, I have been marveling at the tenacity of the snowmobile club members. Snowmobile clubs are still in existence, although their membership is probably not as big or as strong as it once was. But each year over the past four years, the clubs have marked all their trails with "stop" signs and "yield" signs and "slow" signs -- optimistic that perhaps more snow would fall so the trails could be open.
Unfortunately, the last few years, we have only gotten about one-third to one-half of our regular snowfall. The weather forecasters say our average snowfall is around 60 inches per winter. Because the snow has been scarce, the snowmobile trails have only been open for a few weekends during the winter. And it is rare to hear the sound of snowmobiles on a Saturday or Sunday during the day or at night.
But with our most recent snowfall, I see that some of the snowmobiles are coming out of storage. I see snowmobile tracks along the ditches and across some of the fields.
Boots and Gloves
Even though the snowmobile industry is not what it once was, I am grateful for one thing: the industry was responsible for the availability of warmer winter clothes. Boots that would keep your feet warm down to 40 below zero. Same thing for gloves. And warm coverall-type snowmobile suits. And hats and masks to keep your face warm.
Before that, the only thing available for kids -- or at least the only things I had -- were knitted mittens and hats and scarves and little rubber boots that kept my feet dry but did nothing to keep them warm for any length of time.
Once large numbers of people began riding snowmobiles around here in the winter, however, the stores started carrying the boots and gloves and hats and jackets and snow pants and snowmobile suits. Whereas it was once difficult to find clothing that would keep you warm in subzero temperatures, it became much easier to find that kind of clothing.
Yes, the average daily temperature for the past week around here was six degrees and was below zero with the windchill. But at least nowadays, I've got warmer clothing to help me survive the cold!
LeAnn R. Ralph