4:06 pmWinter’s Looming
Utah is beautiful. Let me just put that out there. I want to make that point abundantly clear so you won’t misunderstand what I am about to say:
Man, did I move to the wrong state.
This is a picture taken from my deck three minutes ago:
What’s wrong with this picture, you ask? It’s frickin’ beautiful, right? Well, the thing is, all of that snow that you see covering that lovely mountain will soon move down to cover the valley floor (read: my house). Snow on the mountain means snow will soon be in the valley. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I LIKED WINTER. Which I don’t. I pretty much hate winter. I hate cold. My hands ache (I suspect it’s the beginnings of arthritis). I hate bundling up in 8 layers of clothing to run to the store for milk… and I hate that the milk is then frozen when you get home. I hate that the hem of my pants will remain perpetually wet and freezing cold for the next 4 months. I can’t ski (well, I can ski, but at incredible risk to myself and everyone standing a ski pole’s length from me). I hate driving in the snow. I hate driving with other people around me who can’t drive in the snow. I do love shoveling snow. Ok, that was a test to see if you were listening. Of course I hate shoveling snow. Because you picked up on my theme of hate, right?
And it’s not like I wasn’t warned when I moved to this beautiful state. As soon as I drove over the Colorado border into Utah (way back in 1996) in my Volkswagon Rabbit (packed to the ceiling with all of my earthly possessions, luckily one of those possessions being a coat), I was greeted with the Utah license plate: Ski Utah!, Greatest Snow on Earth! Why, when seeing this braggy and obnoxious claim, did I not make a safe-ish u-turn and hightail it to Florida? Or just keep on going until I hit L.A.? Well, the honest answer would be that my car — from a “working” stand-point – would not have made it over another state border… and I was completely, dead broke. But also honestly, I love Utah. It is my home now. It is beautiful and the people are nice. If only I could somehow get mother nature to adopt a more tropical climate in the winters. But it ain’t gonna happen (and even if it did, that would be bad. Hello, Utah a tropical climate? Enter the end of the world).
So I will buy cute winter coats, and warm and snuggly gloves and hats, and tone up my ice-scraping arm, and buckle down for the next four months… and remind myself of how great this place is the other 2/3 of the year.
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I am always so excited when the first snow of winter comes. I play in it. I sing about it. Then, two days later, I’m sick of winter. If I had it my way, it’d snow once a year on Christmas and that’d be it.
That photo from your deck, though? Amazing! What a view.
Comment by Leslie — October 7, 2007 @ 5:00 pm
I hate the snow as well. That is main reason we moved away from Utah to lovely Raleigh, NC. (did I just say lovely?) I have been here two years and I have not seen snow since.
The locals say that is snows once in a while — like in 2001 when they got 21 inches of snow and school was shutdown for two weeks and no one had to go to work.
Move to raleigh… its 90 degrees today and you can still hit the beach.
Comment by grant — October 8, 2007 @ 6:05 am
I wish I was there to see the mountains! We pretty much live in Kansas! It’s just flat nothing here! I’m with you on the annoyingness of wet pants. I guess that’s what we get for being short!
Comment by Sam — October 8, 2007 @ 7:23 am
It is so pretty, but Greg went to school in Logan and he said the winters are miserably cold. I hope you adapt; do they make sexy long underwear?
Comment by Mama Milton — October 8, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
The wet pant thing is the worst! Especially when you have to walk for quite a ways, but thanks to Michael Jackson’s fashion sense and the 80’s, you can taper them up! They won’t drag on the floor. You might seem a little crazy to others, but who cares, your pants won’t be wet.
At the bottom of your pants fold over the extra cloth, and roll it up! They won’t move, and you can just roll them down when you arrive to your destination! It works perfectly!
Thanks MJ.
Comment by Beverley Viljoen — October 9, 2007 @ 4:40 pm