Tales from Exit 22, By Al Batt

Do you feel a draft?

It’s called winter.

Don’t panic!

The weather has been lovely sometimes, but we’ve received a troubling amount of cold that causes us to trudge through a day.

We give up saying “Hello” for “Cold enough for you?”

It’s been cold enough to freeze an egg on the sidewalk. I couldn’t see the forest for the freeze. The hands on my pocket watch wore mittens. I’m surprised that Iowa hasn’t built a wall along its Minnesota border to keep the cold out.

We shudder at the cold touch of winter, which was invented by the Arizona Tourism Board.

We listen to a weather report as if it were a coroner’s report. Impassable roads and frozen extremities form the headlines as the climate takes a change for the worse.

It was during the days when there was so much snow that I had to put on snowshoes and climb out the attic window just to get outdoors. It was colder than the south end of a northbound penguin. That winter was so bad, the chickens had formed into a V-formation and walked south. One day, while we huddled around the toaster for warmth, my grandmother’s lips had thawed enough that she became gabby. She said that winter chilled her to the bones.

I tried, but I couldn’t unhear that. I remember thinking, “Ewwww!”

Little did I know that I was mining the wisdom of my elders. Grandma was right. I know it now. A grandmother makes a career out of being right.

When it comes to weather, our judgment can be clouded. Most folks dislike cold temperatures. Not many people buy a house here in the winter for its air conditioning.

Winter is no elephant in the room. Everybody talks about it. Winter is a good conversation piece. We compare snowfall amounts and temperatures.  Winter provides a bit of uneasiness, but it has its determined admirers. I’m one of them. I like winter, but I wouldn’t want to own it. The muted palette of the winter landscape is lovely as brown fades to white. My complaint is the travel difficulties winter brings. It does me no good to complain. A dog could bark at the moon all night, but the moon won’t leave until it’s good and ready. Winter is like the moon.

The winter solstice was on Dec. 21. The term solstice comes from the Latin word solstitium, meaning “the sun stands still.” The beginning of the meteorological winter is Dec. 1. Meteorological seasons are divided according to the months. Winter is defined as the three months with the lowest average temperatures. That corresponds to the months of December, January and February in the Northern Hemisphere. You can pick the winter dates you prefer, but the weather is going to be the same either way.

I led a bus trip to do some birding at the Sax-Zim Bog in northern Minnesota on a day when it was 33 degrees below zero as we boarded the bus. I called it the “Who among us dares tempt the wrath of winter” tour. As folks from places like Tennessee, Texas and Florida shuffled by me (I’d taught them how to do the Minnesota winter survival shuffle wherein one lifts a foot from the ground only when absolutely necessary), one said, with incredulity dripping from her words, ”It has to warm up 33 degrees just to get to zero.”

She had excellent mathematical skills. She’d like Carl Reiner, who said, “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.“

I told her the cold kept the mosquitoes at bay and the deep snow cut down on the lawn mowing.

That was the tour I discovered how much fun it was to try to find a lost contact lens in the snow.

How do you know when it’s too cold? If you live in a bad part of Minnesota, called Minnesota, it’s too cold. My Hartland Poll (margin of error 51 percent) showed that 68 percent of Minnesotans think our winters are too cold. One of our gubernatorial candidates wants the other 32 percent tracked down, shot with tranquilizer darts and refrigerated until they come to their senses.

Radio and TV carry flake news. If you don’t enjoy the thrill of shoveling (the Annual Snow Shoveling Contest will be held in my yard again this year), know that the snow will disappear if ignored long enough.

Winter will come and go, but it helps if you maintain a forgiving spirit.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Sunday and Wednesday.