The snow is so dense I cannot see across the lake. It looks like one of those socked in grey days on the ocean, and I am feeling truly isolated today. I am not alarmed but it does give me pause.
I have been waxing poetic about the beauty of winter up here in these hills. Oh it has been a hard winter, I know. Someone said 9 feet of snow since November. Leonard has plowed the road so many times I've felt obliged to supplement his contract pay with food and liquor, and I have forgotten how many times I have shoveled and de-iced those 39 steps so far. But it is beautiful, and I do like being a hermit, so I feel no great need to get out every day ... or indeed ... every week.
But ... at 7 a.m. when I lugged the bag of garbage up the hill on the sled, my intention was to take it all the way out to Pike Lake Road so that the garbage truck wouldn't have to come all the way in on icy surfaces, and I discovered that my road was now impassable to a pedestrian wearing ice walkers. I really was snowed in this time.
That fine powder snow which allows skiers to fly over the surface is treacherous on top of ice. I might have been safe on snow shoes, but definitely not with ice grippers on boots. They just slid across the surface until they went through to the ice below and then I had no control at all, especially on an incline, and my whole route is hilly. Yesterday it was icy and I almost didn't get the car up the first hill to my winter parking place, but at least I could see where danger lay when I was walking.
I am reading a novel about an eighty year old woman whose car goes off the road and down a ravine. She is thrown free and breaks bones and keeps trying to drag herself to the car so that she can blow the horn for help. It helped me to imagine vividly what would happen if I broke a hip and had to crawl back to the house to get to a phone.
Then I realized that an ambulance would be unable to reach me anyway.
Discretion being the better part of valour, I put the bag in the container, propped the toboggan against a tree, threw a few sticks for Kenya, and shoveled the last dozen steps and a token path to the front door instead. I know I am not as tough as the fictional eighty year old, but I do all right for a woman of sixty-seven. However; I do know my limits.
2 comments:
What's the name of the book you're reading? It sounds familiar; I think someone once told me about it and recommended it.
I'm catching up on your posts from the past few days. Having so much trouble staying connected to the internet. It takes me about a half an hour to even post a picture to my blog. Oh, I wish, I wish, I wish I had hi speed!!!!
But having dialup and being stranded at home (like you) just gives me the time to just relax, take my time and try to learn some patience...
Hi Erin: Counting the Bones is the novel. I hate dial-up too and it is getting worse as more and more people get hi speed.
made it out to the mail boxes on snow shoes only to discover that the boxes were under a huge dump of snow left by the plow so the mailman couldn't deliver today! Gave me a chance to chat with my neighbours but lord it was a tough haul out.
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