Winter Storm

It came early that year- earlier than anyone could remember. It was a winter like none other. The snow came suddenly one night in mid-October. For several days, brilliant sun kept on shining as the snow continued to dance its way down from the heavens to earth. And as it danced its many arabesque rhythms, it filled the roadside ditches with a myriad of snowy peaks and furls until one could no longer see the frozen ice of the ditches. The fence posts were covered with snow. One couldn’t tell where the fields began nor ended.

The snow was still lazily floating down on the last day of October, when Nola looked out on the pathway to the barn. So much snow she mused. It was bitter cold too. She wondered how she could have managed, had she not kept Timothy and Katelyn out of school that year. She needed their help to run the farm while her husband was in hospital recovering from his bone grafts and hip surgeries. She could call on his brother across the road, she thought, if she needed advice.

Then, as suddenly as they had begun, those peaceful snow filled days of October ended. The sky grew windy, blustery and dark. Huge snowflakes wove a steady pathway down to the frozen snowy crusts that covered the earth below, until they fell, exhausted, turning themselves into more icy crusts of snow. Winter had turned into a wild performance, a never ending syncopated tango, one that lasted for the next four months.

Each day brought more and more snow. Snowplows travelled the country roads daily until they could no longer lift their burden up to the ten foot snowy mountains that they had already created.   Timothy and his mother took their cream and eggs by sleigh across the snow-covered fields to Wallacetown where the creamery owner met them.

The snow couldn’t melt on these bitter cold days and there was a fear that the barn well would dry up. Each day Timothy and Katelyn drove the cattle and horses over to their uncle’s farm. They chopped the ice in the stream that ran through his property so the animals could drink. One day ran into the next!

Finally, in March, the frenzied tempo of the winter concerto, came to an end. The sun began to shine brightly, bringing with it trickles of water from under the snowbanks across the laneway.  The huge glass icicles that hung firmly on to the eaves troughs all this time, began to drip their final days and the icy crusts of the roadside began to sink lower and lower and lower, until one day Mr. Underhill came by in his horse and buggy, delivering the country mail.  What a glorious day it was to see him once more!  Before long people could travel the roads again and leave the snow filled symbol of this trying winter behind them. The winter of 1944!

The snowdrops were beginning to poke their way through the snow now, their joyful lyrics announcing that a new season of “beginning” was on its way.