Above, a car that slid off into a field has been towed to a windrow, but the tow appears to have snapped. A car coming toward me that had blindly entered my lane is crossing back over to get around the accident. Feb 4, 2025 10:15 AM.
We are several days into bitterly cold temps, with windchills approaching -40C/F. Salt does not melt the snow. The snow on the roads is compacted into a glacial hard substance further polished to glare ice by exhaust and rejects the well-intentioned attempts of sanding trucks at corners. Cars are on life support, kept together with gasline antifreeze and block heaters – forgetting to plug in your car overnight can be the kiss of death. Some cars die at intersections when the lights turn green; others simply freeze up en route and sit abandoned on the side of the road, emergency lights long since burned out in 3+ day wait times for a tow.
I am reminded of a poem Dad would often quote during deep freezes:
Canadian January Night
-Alden Nowlan
Ice storm; the hill
pyramid of black crystal
down which the cars
slide like phosphorescent beetles
while I, walking backwards in obedience
to the wind, am possessed
of the fearful knowledge
my compatriots share
but almost never utter:
this is a country
where a man can die
simply from being
caught outside.
“A man can die/simply from being/caught outside”. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it. Nature itself forces you to confront your own imminent mortality, reminding you you’re not in control.
Dad was keenly aware of man’s limitations vs nature. Despite humankind’s ceaseless attempts to dominate the landscape, we remain remarkably fragile beings, reliant on just the right conditions – including gravity, temperature, and pressure – to survive. Cold snaps and hostile environmental conditions tend to crystallize this awareness.
Energy brownouts and threats of blackouts in the province a year ago exacted terror. Loss of power and heat can easily end in frostbite, or even worse, death, at these temperatures. For many houseless, every night is a struggle with the elements to stay alive. A hobo friend of mine nearly died in a fire from a heater in a tent trying desperately to stay warm. An unhoused individual a few days ago in Edmonton wasn’t nearly as lucky.
My heart always breaks for the wildlife facing bitterly cold nights. In -35 even birds who don’t get along will sit side by side on the food tray, fluffed up and huddling together to take in the day’s necessary nutrients. Mom continues to feed Dad’s birds and squirrels, and I leave small offerings for the magically silent, white hares who visit my front lawn under the cold moon’s light.
Below, Dad feeds the birds and squirrel in robe on a winter morning in 2014
Dad was very intentional with the importance of staying safe and warm during cold snaps. He’d equip me with extension cords to plug my car in at work, and, before the advent of light up extension cords, a light to plug in to ensure power was flowing to the plug. I remember the silence in the darkness of the prairies at my rural school, being the first one to arrive in the morning, plugging in my heater, waiting for the telltale hiss of the heater kicking in, and then breathing a sigh of relief.
Heating blankets and pads, warm layers, heated plug in seats, and portable heaters would be gifted back and forth. During the beginning of this cold snap I could hear Dad asking if I’d checked the tire pressure in the car lately, and if I had enough gasline antifreeze. (Speaking of car advice, I dutifully throw the car into neutral at corners- this trick of his that has saved my hide more than a few times, including at an icy intersection just this morning!)
One poem Dad would read me often as a young child was Robert W. Service’s 1907 poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee”. The poem featured a man who followed the gold rush from Tennessee up to the Yukon, but was perpetually cold. Eventually he succumbed to hypothermia, but prior to passing, his last request was to be cremated so he could be warm again at last. The poem is from Robert W. Service’s book Songs of a Sourdough.
On a very strange but slightly related tangent, a few years ago I obtained 1898 sourdough starter from the gold rush from Yukon (125+ years old – https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukon-sourdough-gold-rush-dna-1.5289030), and Dad thoroughly enjoyed a slice of bread from a still-warm loaf.
Here’s another tangent – below is a little excerpt of one of Dad’s posts mentioning the poem (January 17, 2020), and the connection to his own “Connections” series:
“The Cremation of Sam McGee” perfectly describes how bone-chilling cold it gets up here, and how difficult it can be to warm back up once you’ve been out in the elements.
Dad knew the importance of intentionally heating up from within – with warm tea, coffee, and hot chocolate and with warm soups and hearty meals. Sometimes he’d serve Baileys Irish Cream after dinner, and sometimes after coming in from the cold after travelling over he’d greet you with Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry to warm up (below pic).
Along with the bitter cold, ice, mountains of snow, windchills, and dryness battles fought with creams and humidifiers, there is another just as pervasive hurdle in overcoming winter living this far north. The days are short, the darkness is long, and can bring along symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Depression, lethargy, loneliness and isolation easily settles in. Although most of us live in urban areas, the desolate isolation felt during winter in the prairies – portrayed so well in Sinclair Ross’ short story “The Painted Door” – is still entirely relatable. We become prisoners of our homes in this weather, our isolation punctuated by brief treks out on treacherous, wagon-trail like roads.
Below, the ice wagon trails of roads with windrows on the twice daily trek to Mom’s
It can be a struggle to stay vital during the winter months – motivated, active, healthy, and engaged. Dad spoke to this in his Dec 2015 post (originally published in Dec 2013). As usual, he says it best, and I quote directly here:
“Always at this time of year, at the most frigid of times, I resort to imagination and healthful viewing to warm the cockles of mind, heart and soul. It is as simple as putting on my Visions of Italy, Sicily, and Greece DVDs. And there it all is–all that any frozen human could ever want–the regions of the beginnings of Western civilization in their warm sunny splendor gloriously from the air! The quaint red-roofed towns, the grey rocky coasts that spill into the sea, the warm sun-baked lands with vineyards, the deserted but often intact ruins and castles and churches, the green trees springing up from the sun-baked streets, the dark blue or green waters and the pale or brilliant blue skies.
The longer I live, the more I’m convinced that the main essence/raison d’etre remains consciousness, (especially that fostered and developed by imagination), the raising of spirits as simple as some will, some consciousness of what is most needed, and then the application of whatever resources. If this means spending $$$ for whatever, it hardly/never matters to me. One must finally minister to one’s self and be responsible for whatever attitudes, soul-moods, and freedom one wishes to have. Will logically follows (‘A man can do all things if he will.”–Alberti), then the availability and application of whatever resources, taking/making the time for such, and exercising those soul-nurturing choices.
-30 windchill Edmonton no longer exists for me as I now go outdoors today. Only Sicily–the inner warmth of that state of soul, that so-civilized climate, that sunny warm disposition and sensibility. It all begins with imagination and the conscious individual.“ (Richard Davies)
As I take Dad’s words to heart and face a -37C windchill again tonight, I am reminded of his last written post-it note, handed to me the morning of his surgery:
Dad is right. When you distill life right down to its essence, it really is about staying warm, staying vital, both outside and in – in body, heart, and mind. I am trying my best to keep warm, feeling my love for him and his love for me and holding close the wisdom he shared with me over many decades. Each day I try to survive a winter much colder than the one outside – the winter of grief and unfathomable loss within my soul. He’s given me a map of the way and he’s given me the tools, but I’m still fumbling quite a bit trying to pull it together and but am continuing to try to forge ahead.