Moonscape?

Yeah, I know. There is no snow on the moon. Or trees. Or lights, at least not unless somebody has landed there. This is the backside of the school parking lot where the plows stack up all the snow. It was snowing to beat the band at the time but it was also warm enough that the only place any of it stuck was the grass and trees. Not the pavement. I wore my yaks anyway. They make for horrible walking on pavement but I knew there was ice underneath the snow in the woods and I NEEDED to walk in the woods.

This snow pile is higher than my head and it reminded me of a time waaaaay back in the Jurassic age when I thought I had lost my children and various friends of theirs. They were well old enough to go to the schoolyard alone, especially in a big clump. So I was humming along doing something in the Landfill Chitchen with NPR rolling along in the background. And I looked outside and. and. and. It was getting DARK! And I had one of those moom moments. Where are my kids?

I went outside and yelled for them. Nobody had mobile phones in those days. No reply. It was eerily silent outside. I went in to full-tilt boogie Panic Mode. I yelled some more. I ran over to the edge of the schoolyard and yelled some more. Nothing. I grabbed my bike and pedaled madly over to the OTHER entrance to the school yard, the one in the pic, dodging ice patches along the Bacon Driving Route.

I can’t remember exactly how it ended. Did I find them or did I turn around and find them at the Landfill when I got home? Whatever happened, OF COURSE it ended well. They were hanging out behind those big piles of snow and I could neither see nor hear them.

When I was a kid living on the south side of Sault Ste. Siberia, I remember neighbors who built snowbanks so high you could actually sled down them into the street, which was almost always covered with hard-packed snow. It never felt dangerous to sled into the street. I suppose we were paying more attention than adults think children do.

Come to think of it, *our* kids used to sled down the Fabian’s front yard into the street when it snowed enough to do that. I remember letting them stay out late (10-11 PM) on snowy nights, even when there was school the next day. We certainly get snow here in Southeast Trollandia. It regularly wreaks havoc with the roads but during *most* winters, enough snow for decent sledding is rare and lasts only a short time.

One Response to “Moonscape?”

  1. Margaret Says:

    When I was a kid going to Central Washington to visit grandparents in the winter, they got that kind of snow(don’t anymore) and I remember being terrified I would fall through the hard crust and be over my head. (which I definitely would have since the snow was at least 6 feet deep) The streets had tall walls of snow from the plows with left turns carved out of them. We never got that kind of snow in Western Washington, so it was quite an adventure. Not so much for my parents driving over the pass with chains on the car.