Flotsam & Jetsam | It’s Still Pretty, I Suppose

— a semi-regular humor column by Maurice Austin —

Back in November, when we had that first really good gully-washer of the season, I remember chatting with a couple islanders about the coming winter, and both of them mentioned something about the almanac, and that it predicted it would be a rough winter this year, with cold and moisture enough to go around, meaning to make snow aground, maybe even stick a couple days, not like the Cascade concrete we usually get, pour it in a few hours and it’s gone in another few. Cascade concrete is stuff so heavy it’s only really pretending to be snow, is in fact upright water, too proud to melt properly but lacking the breezy airiness of actual snow, so it pretends to be snow until it’s stepped on, when it becomes part of an insole, part of a sock, sheesh.

I’ve never really put much faith in that ancient mystical barn-door prophet known affectionately as the almanac, but have in the past examined several of its barn-door prophesies, so-named because they can be so variously interpreted that it would be impossible to throw them at a target as wide as a barn door and miss, unless you were raising animals that need only really skinny doors, I guess, like Mogul Mice and Snow Snakes, or other various Ski-Patrol fundraiser mascots. Though perhaps by now, Mogul Mice and Snow Snakes have gone the way of glacier glasses and electric socks, and the almanac is back in vogue. Or still in vogue. Bit hard to admit so now, after all, the forecasters haven’t exactly nailed our predicament down to a tee this season, starting with the windstorm that didn’t, up until the snowstorm that wasn’t…look, can we talk about this snow thing? Sure sure, you’re so sick of hearing somebody gush about how pretty or beautiful it is that you want to punch a snowplow straight in the plow, because your socks are soaked and your eyebrows frosted, and did a little white mouse just crawl down your scarf into your shirt collar?

It’s not that most Washington drivers are afraid of a little snow, or even a lot. What most Washington drivers are afraid of (and justifiably so) are other Washington drivers. Washington drivers as a whole tend to be steadfast, orderly, and stolid in mist, fog, drizzle, partial showers, partial sun, periodic rain, rain, thunderstorms, and downpours, even sidepours, but many alas end up in the ditch after the first half-inch of fluffy due to speed or the inability to properly gauge the slipperiness of slopes that local tow-truck drivers name fondly, as might anglers name favored fishing-holes. In my childhood, our family lived three-quarters up what in the winter was termed “Spinout Hill” and we’d frequently boot up and tumble out onto the frozen driveway just for the enjoyment of watching some ill-equipped motorist try his or her luck, which never went well, but being three-quarters of the way up, at least we could leave the car in the driveway. Those lower down didn’t dare.

Perched as we are on this our fair isle right off the tip of the Fraser River valley arctic shotgun, it should come as no surprise that occasional dustings occur, but this winter has been as resilient as tuberculosis, pretty as it is, and it might just be Old Man Winter has a few cool words to whisper to us yet, even as we tumble into March, and once again lose track of where we put the ice scraper, and those gloves we kept handy for scraping. Somewhere in a parallel dimension, at the confluence of warm and cold, I suspect ice-scrapers and lost socks are eloping, finding equilibrium in their just-from-the-dryer toast­iness and tucked-under-the-back-seat-mat frigidity. Perhaps winter’s lost flashlights, which have been migrating steadily since the onset of our dark season, will eventually join the melee and finally spring Spring free from these icy confines, motorists and tow-truck drivers and you there, those February Snow Snakes coiling around your collar, look, would I could I’d do to you what Spring does to a cherry tree, as Neruda put it, just hang on, March is marching in, April’s snowfall will at least be attended by birdsong, and May may warm us, at last, at least, though last year’s June felt like Juneuary, and this soaked angler’s hands never really un-pruned.

Hang on, and if your rear axle gets sunk to the hubs in pretty, smile. At least you know where your ice scraper is.

Was.