winter in Alberta

Gonna Write that Novel on The Snowy Day


As I mentioned yesterday, it’s NaNoWriMo time and I was musing about getting back to writing that actual first novel for once. So today, I started it. I have decided to fictionalize the life I didn’t have. The one where my natural mom kept me instead of giving me away to be adopted. I am going to say that so far, I am not envisioning an existence that is much of an improvement over the one I ended up with but it’s only chapter two.

I started using a planner again to map out my days and weeks, which is proving valuable in terms of cleaning, decluttering, and writing. Hopefully it will help me finish this novel. End goal? A short novel by the end of the month. And then we will see where to go after that.

In other news, it’s snowing like a bastard. I don’t know that I have ever despised winter as much as I do now. Snow has its sports but most of them are funding intensive. Winter is mainly a chore and a hazard for people who are forced by necessity to leave their homes and navigate the world. Municipalities have become worse and worse at making winter semi-endurable. Roads are shite. Sidewalks are worse. The inability to safely get about does nothing to make this season more appealing. I don’t care how pretty it looks.

When I was a kid, I loved snow. I spent hours outside. Sledding. Building forts. Skating. I was the last child in nearly every night. Pant legs frozen stiff and face chapped with wind burn. There was something peaceful about the dark with just starlight and a frozen moon looking down on you. But when you’ve adulted in winter as long as I have, the lustre wanes.

I was hoping the endlessness of day after day snowfall would hold off another month but that doesn’t appear to be our fate this year. And I still don’t have the snow tires on the truck. Wish me luck.

Winter Is Coming


Winter Is Coming

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been reading George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, known more popularly as Game of Thrones. One of it’s often repeated lines is “Winter is coming.” It’s the family motto of the Stark family, who has ruled in the North forever and a day at as the story begins and it is meant to remind them that the season is more than just cold, snow and ice. Its application is deeper than simply the superficial preparations that are important for survival in the frigid northern terrain. It’s about vigilance, internal fortitude and looking beyound the obvious to see what is really coming.

Late February, even in a mild winter such as the one we are enjoying, is the time when winter feels as though it has always been. Green, leafy and blooming is forgotten as though it never happened last year at all, and in some respects it didn’t thanks to the endless rainy spring that drowned much of June and July.

In our neck of Alberta, “winter is coming” could almost be read “winter is” and be done with it.

Regardless of when the snow falls, at the end of February, we are still a good two and a half months from the outer limits of winter and snow can fall as easily in July and August as it can in January. It requires a special kind of endurance to live with winter hanging over one’s head all the time, taunting and sure of itself.

It snowed over the weekend and again this morning. We haven’t had snow if a while, but even with the oddly warm temperature, snow and ice cling stubbornly to the ground.

No matter how optimistically I begin, the Iowa girl in me misses March’s first promise of spring. As the time approaches for either lion or lamb to enter the building, I begin to feel as though I am living in Martin’s vision of an endless winter without even the promise of dragons or magical swords to subdue it.