It may be cold and snowy, but there’s no dead cow at door
This is normally the time of year I find myself writing about the cold.
Or snow. Or both.
It’s February, after all, and we tend to get wintry conditions during this month that follows January that also tends to be brutally snowy and frigid.
Yes, I’m being a bit facetious, taking a slight jab at all of us who complain about the weather and especially those of us in the newsroom who like to write stories about it.
We’ve certainly been through more than our share in recent years. I’m not sure how many headlines were published a couple years ago that contained the phrase “polar vortex.” And I will never forget the winter of 2015, when I ventured out into the elements to get photos depicting the rugged conditions and ended up in a deep ditch that required emergency excavation.
Another time, with temperatures in the minus double digits, I locked myself out of the car with no phone on an isolated rural Kane County road while attempting to get some color for a weather column only to be saved — and this time I mean that literally — by a tow truck that thankfully appeared out of the stark Arctic-white on his way to another emergency.
This is another brutal spell we’re going through, not just here in the Midwest but as far south as Texas, a state that is likely to remember the winter of 2021 right up there with the Alamo.
But records around here are teetering as well, which is especially noteworthy since we experienced such a mild December and January. That reprieve seemed appropriate considering all the depression and isolation we’ve had to endure now for nearly a year that had nothing to do with Old Man Winter.
If there was any year we all deserved a mild winter, wasn’t it this one?
Alas, it was not meant to be. Just like that shot in the arm most of us are still waiting for to fight the virus, spring is close yet so far away. As much as we’d like to be thumbing through seed and garden catalogs, we’re instead keeping an eye on our roofs wondering if they could collapse. Or staring out at driveways that more closely resemble toboggan runs.
As much as I’d like to feel sorry for myself, my heart mostly goes out to the kids, who already have been cheated out of sports and birthday parties and other redletter gatherings and don’t even get to claim legitimate snow days now that remote learning is part of their vernacular.
This winter is so awful, according to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, that he had to issue a “disaster proclamation” for all 102 counties of the state after this latest winter storm dumped up to 18 inches on the ground in some areas and led to about 7,000 power outages.
To which I say, what wimps we have all become.
Illinois has experienced plenty of years where Old Man Winter punched often and hard. But the granddaddy of them all goes back exactly 190 years, to 1830-31 and THE WINTER OF THE DEEP SNOW, which must remain in all caps when you consider just a few of the things our hardy pioneers had to endure.
Long before Snuggies and Uber Eats and remote car starting systems, Mother Nature dropped about 19 inches of the white stuff in our neck of the woods on Christmas Eve of 1830 and did not let up for over 60 days.
Historians describe it as one of the deepest, coldest and longestlasting wintry spells since the retreat of the last glacier, with drifts reaching up to 20 feet high and weeks of fierce winds and temperatures that on many mornings never got higher than 12 below zero.
While most of us Chicago-area folks like to grumble and/or brag about the intestinal fortitude it takes to live here, the settlers in this then-sparsely populated area had their hands full trying to survive. And by that, I don’t mean having to endure a few nights with your mother-in-law until your power gets turned back on.
I’m talking about scrounging for food for your family living inside a cabin that’s leaking snow under 20-foot drifts.
According to the Aurora Historical Society archives and numerous other chronicles, domestic and wild animals were the first to perish in this brutal climate. The winter is not only blamed for nearly wiping out the buffalo herds in the area but also claiming thousands of wolves, which lay around frozen in fields and woods until spring came along and thawed them out enough for settlers to turn their hides into coats.
But there were also plenty of frozen human bodies, including a husband and wife with six kids who were found on the prairie huddled in death around their half-burned-out wagon.
One settler reported how, after getting caught in a blizzard with a friend while returning from a hunting trip, they were only able to survive by cutting the wagon loose and making it home by hanging on to the tails of their oxen.
Man and beast were definitely in this together.
Take for example the Hobson family of Kendall County, who after running out of provisions, father Bailey Hobson set out with his brother-in-law to fight their way to the nearest settlement for food.
According to the Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, it was during a blizzard that his wife heard footsteps at her door and thinking her husband had returned, opened it to find their best cow dead at her feet, so frozen she could not close the door or move the animal.
The wind blew savagely and the cold was so intense that she and her children were in danger of freezing themselves until they finally were able to push the cow far enough to close the door.
Yes, Bailey Hobson — who moved his family to DuPage County in the spring — finally did return, but only after a couple of weeks in which his wife feared they too had frozen like the cow she and the kids had to step over every time they ventured outside.
It’s no wonder that, for years afterward, Illinois residents would measure time based on The Winter of the Deep Snow, including Abraham Lincoln, who was a newcomer to Illinois in fall 1830.
Interesting side note: Those who survived this most cruel of winters deserved a medal — literally. Some were given medallions that designated them as “Snow Birds,” a title they carried with pride.
According to an article from The Illinois Intelligencer that was written for the state’s Sesquicentennial Celebration in 1968, one pioneer wrote, “I have my Snow Bird badge which was given me at the Old Settlers’ meeting at Sugar Grove. I prize it very highly and would not trade it for a hundred wild turkeys running at large in Oregon.”
Think about all that today — especially the frozen cow — as we huddle around our iPads and Door Dash takeouts and watch the snow pile up from inside our temperature-controlled homes.
I’m not saying we don’t have a right to complain, or that we can’t get ourselves into uncomfortable or unsafe conditions when extreme weather hits. Trust me, I’ve been far more careful about venturing out into this kind of weather.
Plus, as mentioned before, 2020-21 truly is a winter like no other, not because of the snowfall but because of a pandemic that has kept us isolated and anxious and way off schedule.
The trick to getting through it, as I’m sure was employed by our hardy pioneers, is trying to stay positive by looking toward March.
That’s when garden centers will once more begin to fill, spring training games will be held and high school football here in Illinois will begin.
Historic times indeed.