Waiting on winter

As a kid, I remember winters felt really long. I understand that memories of childhood can be skewed but, as I recall, winters were cold and snowy. Perhaps not as extreme as the winters my mother told me about from her own girlhood in the Black Forest when, she said, they sometimes couldn’t open the door to get outside because of the depth of the snow, but still winter was a thing.

Puddles and ponds and lakes were frozen – including the nine mile long lake where I grew up where the ice was often solid enough (hopefully!) to support the weight of cars taking a shortcut on beer runs to town. School buses were equipped with chains on the tires and the affectionately recalled derelicts in the village enjoyed an activity known as skitching, a practice in which one would grab ahold of the rear bumper of a car, unbeknownst to the driver, and hang on, sliding across the unplowed streets.

It looked like fun, but that level of recklessness was never my thing. I preferred coasting down dark trails on flattened cardboard boxes after my friends and I killed a pint of Southern Comfort. Now, that was a good time.

When I first moved to Albany in 1988, I was a bit concerned about being this far “upstate.” I imagined the winters would be difficult to tolerate and I remember one December, early in my time here, when it was so cold that I wore long john’s under my tuxedo while working at Yono’s in Robinson Square. I don’t want to imagine what the NiMo bill was for the building with its installed in the 70s, electric baseboard heat.

Recent years, though, have proven to be far more mild. In the past decade or so, it seems to me that here in our fair capital city winter has passed us by.

I miss cross country skiing and walks in the snow. The stillness and beauty of fresh, white snow under a moonlit sky is one of my favorite sights to behold. The hush of snowflakes piling up outside my windows, before the plows and snowblowers fire up, is a most dreamy and beloved sound.

When I hear people complain about winter, how they hate the cold and snow, I’m left to wonder why they live in the Northeast. As I see it, if you’re not a fan of the climate, maybe you should think about relocating. Like, I don’t care for flat, humid landscapes populated by book banning, white supremacists, so you’ll never catch me living in Florida.

We all make our choices, right?*

According to the forecast, it looks like we just may finally get a taste of winter this weekend and I couldn’t be more excited. My skis and Jeter are both ready to hit Muni for our delayed inaugural ski of the season. Maybe we’ll see you there!

*Speaking of choices, if I could choose a day to not have snow, it would be the first Saturday in February. I really need to get to Vegas that weekend to see my favorite lads at the Sphere…