Ah, tis the season. A time to once again celebrate those simple, traditional rituals that bring the human family together, united in spirit and in action.
Christmas? Hanukkah? Kwanzaa? Solstice? No, I refer to the only truly universal winter ritual–one that all New Englanders practice, regardless of personal belief systems: Digging out.
Don’t get me wrong. I love snow, honest I do. I love the way it looks. I love to watch the world turn fluffy and romantic–as long as I’m indoors, watching from behind an insulated window. I love receiving holiday cards showing Currier & Ives-inspired scenes of horse-drawn sleighs and frosted piney woods. I’ve even been known to occasionally brush off a windshield or welcome mat.
But shovel the stuff? You’ve got to be kidding. That’s manual labor. I was raised in Greater Boston, where you paid some enterprising neighborhood kid a king’s ransom to deal with the stuff.
December 1996. My Spousal Unit and I, still unpacking the last few moving cartons, were finally settling into our dream house in the woods. Clapboard-and-shingles… trees all around… splendid isolation… winter wind whistling softly through bare branches, accompanied by the sound of the occasional barred owl, or, in the distance, the muted clacking of a freight train passing alongside the river on its way west. A veritable Norman Rockwell scene. The only thing needed to complete the scene was a picturesque New England snowfall.
Our wish was soon granted that very evening, with large white flakes drifting down, illuminated by the light spilling from our windows. Problem was, once it began it didn’t stop. The next morning we awoke to find everything smothered in over two feet of blinding, malevolent drifts. Snow had obliterated the front steps, buried the tires on the car, and completely blanketed our 200-foot-long driveway all the way to the street. Yikes.
As we pondered the implications of this situation–especially the fact that we didn’t yet own a snowblower–the power cut out. There had been no time to purchase or split wood for our fancy new fireplace. If we wanted to escape to someplace with heat, lights, and water, we would have to shovel our way out by hand.
We downed a hasty breakfast of cold cereal and orange juice, bundled up, and shouldered our shovels. As I stepped through the front door and looked out over the unmarked expanse of chilly white I felt confident, powerful–like Xena, Warrior Princess, facing down a gang of bad guys. No fear! We lived in the country! Where self-sufficiency is a way of life! I was ready. I had read Mother Earth News and Backwoods Living. This would not only be a hands-on introduction to the nitty-gritty of rural living, but an empowering experience, one which I would remember for years to come with a deep sense of contented nostalgia.
Right. After twenty minutes of shovelling, my head was pounding from exertion and caffeine deprivation, and my extremities were stiff and leaden from the icy wind that cut through every layer of clothing.
“Whose idea was it to build so far back from the road?” I growled.
“As I recall,” Spousal Unit said mildly, without once breaking stride, “you wanted to build twice as far back as we are now.”
As he spoke, he systematically cut the snow pack in front of him into precise, identical blocks with the blade of his shovel, and gently, almost delicately deposited them to one side. I watched him in awe, utterly dumbfounded. You’d think he was building an igloo instead of clearing a driveway.
I grabbed my shovel and resumed flinging snow, struggling to find my own best technique. To clear a typical city sidewalk–not that I’d had much practice–you slid your shovel firmly along the pavement, like a straight razor along a giant’s stony cheek. When the shovel filled with snow (along with trash, dog poop, cigarette butts, and other detritus of urban life) you then lifted it from the ground, turned slightly to one side, tilted the shovel forward, and allowed gravity to empty it into the gutter for the snow-removal crews to take care of. Nice, simple and civilized.
Just try that with twenty-four inches of snow on an unpaved driveway. I did. With a mighty push I slid my shovel forward two feet ahead of me and immediately hit a large rock, sending a violent, tooth-rattling shock wave up both arms to my shoulders.
Since city-style skimming was out and lifting two feet of white stuff at a scoopful would guarantee me a weeklong stay in the ICU, a change of tactics was clearly called for. I resorted to double-digging, taking off the top foot or so as if lifting the meringue from a pie, and then removed the second foot underneath. This also served to warn any mice tunnelling under the snow of oncoming shovels.
Eventually the sun set behind the hill. We labored on in silence, mostly by feel, fighting exhaustion. We had been at it almost nine hours. The sparse moonlight filtering through the trees–a beautiful and haunting sight–was all that kept us from working in total darkness. Every so often we’d find enough breath to grunt reassuringly to one another, if only to make sure that one of us hadn’t collapsed face-first into a nearby drift.
At about eight o’clock I noticed Spousal Unit’s shadowy form had assumed a trancelike slow motion. Before I could ask if he was okay, his voice floated toward me in a dreamy monotone.
“Wow… I don’t feel tired anymore… it’s like… Zen… I’m becoming one with the snow…”
That did it. I lost it completely. So did he. Howling with laughter, we cleared the last six feet of driveway, raced back to the house like two schoolkids at recess, tossed our shovels onto the front porch, and piled into his car. With the heater turned up as high as it would go we drove five miles to the nearest restaurant–where, miraculously, the power had remained on–to stuff ourselves with lasagna, cannolis, and Chianti. Then a slow, contented drive back over the river and through the woods to our dark, chilly new home and the old-fashioned comfort of piled blankets on a warm bed.
As I drifted off to sleep I thought, “Who needs the city when you have this?”
I still feel that way.
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