I miss the winters of my childhood. As I write this, the blizzard which was supposed to pounce upon the Boston-DC megalopolis is sort of frittering away outside, steadily downgraded in the radio reports from ?possibly as much as three feet? to ?as much as three inches, more in the suburbs.? We have been spared the awesome might of old man winter, and all in all, I have to approve. Nobody really wants industry to come to a standstill, or to shovel two tons of snow, or to drive everywhere at 20mph. But somehow I feel cheated. Not just of this storm, but of winter generally.
I grew up in Elgin, Illinois, on the western edge of Chicago's suburban collar. For those who don't study weather patterns, the jet stream cuts into Canada through the coastal tail of Alaska, veers sharply right to dip through the Midwest, and cuts up again to exit through Laborador, so we share our weather with the great white north, rather than with the rest of the US. (What the north-central Canadians get hit with is too horrible to contemplate.)
Though winter back home is cold and snowy, there's something nice about the location, too: being so far inland, our winter air is predominantly dry and clear, having lost its Pacific water over the Rockies. Certainly there are gray days, but there are plenty of brilliant ones, too, and that's important with shortened daylight hours. Winter wasn't always nice, but it was exhilarating; the sting on your nose was proof of your participation in the grand schemes of nature.
Now I live in New Jersey, and winter is all wrong. It's warmer, but that's the only thing to like. The snow is ugly. Dense traffic makes it all cruddy before a week has passed, and warm weather makes it collapse into wet mounds littering the treebanks. The sky is drab for weeks at a time. Unlike Illinois, you can go outside any time you want, but why? To slog through the permanent slush puddles in the sidewalk dips? We always get enough weather to keep things from being spring, but never enough to feel like we're really passing through the calendar. Five straight months of February.
In New Jersey, winter is all whiny and boring and goes on and on and on reminding you that life is a burden, and I see it makes me all whiny and boring and go on and on and on reminding you that life is a burden. Where's my sunlamp?