It Begins…

Every year it is the same.  The temperature turns brisk, and the talk begins.  When will we get our first snow?  As I write this our first real snow of the season has begun to fall.  It is a wonderfully still day so the big flakes of snow just fall straight down.  The white stuff begins to lay a perfectly white blanket all across the landscape.

It also brings with it a perpetual dread, and a wish that grows stronger with each passing year.  The dread is the knowledge that someone, is going to have to head out into the elements and clean up the stuff from our walk-ways and drive-ways.  Oh who am I kidding, I know who that someone is, and that someone is me.  In our household, I am the chief snow mover.  I have been now for over twenty-plus years.  While my children harass me to go outside and play in it, all I can think about is the monumental task of moving the stuff to a more convenient place.  I would venture to guess that I have probably moved over a ton of snow by hand in my lifetime.  There lies the want.

Every year I am outside trudging along with my trusty shovel to move wet heavy snow, or dry fluffy snow that blows right back into your face when you throw it.  Every year I push, I lift, and I huff, and I puff, and I dream of warmer days.  It is usually at the point where fatigue is really setting in that I hear that noise in the distance.  That low rumble, yes someone is kicking over their snow blower.  As the years go by, I find myself desiring one of these beasts of my very own.  It is a tough purchase to justify though.  Here in Eastern Nebraska, we can have years that have practically no snow at all, or we can have a back-breaking season like three years ago when we had so much snow that there was about three feet of the white stuff drifted over on to my driveway.  As I get older though, the job is taking a little longer, and I feel it a little more.  I really want one of those wondrous machines.  Course, the real reason to want one is the cascading column of snow it shoots out, now that is some fun stuff.

Ah well, that is just a dream for the moment, as there is still no trusty machine in my garage to help me out.  Only my assortment of shovels to use.  Speaking of which, I better get cracking, this storm is really starting to lay down the white stuff.  If I don’t stay ahead of it, I just might get buried.