Blizzard Envy

The family was driving home last night from my son's band concert and we were discussing the weather in the Midwest.  One of my good friends just moved to Chicago and has been giving me frequent updates on the miserable weather.  She said this is the fourth worst winter in terms of snow and cold since they have been keeping records and her kids have missed school due to the frigid temps.  My husband looked up the Chicago forecast and said it was supposed to be negative 20 below overnight.  My son, who was wearing a short-sleeve shirt and no jacket in the forty degree weather, was jealous.  He only wears long pants when it snows.  He seems to think he would be well adapted to an arctic climate, even though the coldest weather he has ever experienced was skiing in 18 degrees.

Having grown up in Chicago and lived there in my 20's, I've lived through a few of those record winters.  In 1992 or so, there was a month where the temperature never got above zero F.  Walking to the bus to get to work, my eyelashes would freeze.  I was joking with my Chicago friend that I should have worn ski goggles, and sure enough, there was a picture in a Chicago newspaper this week of a woman wearing ski goggles on the street.  In 1978 or so, there was so much snow the parents dug channels in the sidewalk so kids could walk to school.  I was in third grade and the snow came up to my shoulders.  I remember jumping off the second story deck into the snow bank below.  Before I was born, there was the Blizzard of 1967.  My parents were dating and my dad got stuck her family's apartment for days.  I saw pictures of drifting snow covering the tops of cars.  The city was immobilized.

My favorite Chicago blizzard story was in 1999.  About a foot of snow covered Lincoln Park.  My husband and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo which was two blocks from our apartment.  The Zoo was open, and we were there with a handful of others.  The place was very quiet, sounds muffled by snow. We were walking along, when we noticed a wolf looking at us.  Snow drifted over and hid the wall between us and the animal.  Here we were in the middle of a big city, and it felt like we were encountering this animal in the wild.  The next day, I flew to San Francisco.  I thought my flight was canceled, but it wasn't.  I raced outside to find a cab.  I found a driver, and he thought I was nuts trying to make it to Midway.  He took the fare, and my plane took about about an hour later.  Later I learned this flight was likely the only one that made it out of Chicago that day.

We told our son stories of how dangerous it was to be out in conditions where your skin can freeze after a few minutes, and he wasn't swayed.

"The weather in Seattle is always the same,"  he moaned.  "It is always forty degrees." He has a case of blizzard envy.  

I remember when I was a kid, hearing stories of bad weather in other places -- tornados, tropical storms, heat waves -- and thinking it would be such an adventure to experience those things.  Not that it would be fun, but it would be a change from the ordinary.  That was what I longed for -- something different.  It is why people read about Robinson Crusoe or "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer.  In "Into Thin Air, Krakauer describes climbing Mt. Everest, where people chose -- and paid -- to go up into freezing temperatures with violent winds, little visibility and less oxygen.  And getting there required a vast amount of technical skill and physical strength.

Why are we attracted to the dangerous, the scary, the unpredictable?  Does it, ironically, it makes us feel alive?  As I've grown, my desire to experience the unusual or the comfortable has decreased dramatically.  Yet, I imagine life after the mega-quake hits.  What would happen if a 9.0 earthquake hit my hometown? I see myself climbing out from debris, looking for food and water, possibly wet and cold if the quake hits anytime other than summer.  I have to track down my children who might be at school, and my husband at work.  What if it happens at night?  We'll all be home, but have to figure out the new world in the dark.  This imagination helps me prepare for the possibility, not that I ever want to see it happen.

My son, on the other hand, is looking for adventure.  He is looking for a tale to tell.

Here are pictures from my friend's home.