Tuesday, January 11, 2011

1/11/11


Windswept

This is what we look like out here on 11 January 2011.

It was cold this morning, -4°, but not nearly as cold as it has been. We've had -12° with W/Cs into the -40s. That's cold. My mailbox is 70 yards from the house and on such a day the roundtrip brings on the distinctive tingle of incipient frostbite on exposed parts, of which there should be none.

If we ever get enough snow to cover over all the little sprigs of weeds and leave no bare ground whatsoever showing, then we are in big trouble. With the way the wind scours the country such a snow would mean twenty foot drifts. And a very long wait for mail or a trip to town.

There has been no such calamity for years. Back at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries they were fairly common. People could get fatally lost in white-out snowstorms, to be found later just a few yards from their house.

The appeal of this country to human beings is strange, and possibly even perverse as well.

3 comments:

Kansas Scout said...

"possibly even perverse as well". Maybe.
Living in crowds is more perverse. Living on the high plains with dogs is to me pure sanity. I have come to prefer their company.

Sven said...

Stunning.

Reminds me of the long leagues up north of Chugwater, Wyo.

Ditto to what Kansas Scout said, given the tenor of responses to recent events in Tucson!

Rio Arriba said...

I agree about cities: they are not good for people and other living things. The old Celts had the right idea about them. They created no cities and preferred to live apart, at the most in small, usually inter-related communities. That Celtic spirit was brought over here in the persons of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and many other restless crowd-haters.

My comment about "perverseness" was meant ironically.