S’no joke: Keep me away from the stuff
There’s this scene in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” where Clark Griswold, eager to make a quick getaway after helping himself to several hundred dollars from the hotel cash drawer, stands oblivious to one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
“Don’t you want to look at the Grand Canyon?” wife Ellen asks, as Clark hurriedly herds their kids into the car.
Clark grabs her, looks at the Grand Canyon, nods his head twice and faster than you could say “Aunt Edna is dead,” he got the heck out of there.
That scene pretty much encapsulates my feelings about snow.
Look, I get the beauty, and the chill of a fine majestic winter morn, and all the rest of that. But whereas some people actually seem to enjoy getting out of their homes and intermingling with the stuff, I’m perfectly content just looking, nodding, saying something like, “That sure is pretty,” while telling myself, “OK, I’ve seen snow, and now I’m good for at least another couple of years.”
Otherwise, I just don’t get the attraction.
Snow is cold. Snow is slippery. Snow causes all kinds of bad things to happen. Snow takes normally clumsy people (and bad drivers) and not only sentences them to an unavoidable rendezvous with pain, it all too often takes out perfectly innocent people in the process.
I like looking at snow, in small doses. But I like looking at alligators, too. That doesn’t mean I want to jump into the water with them and try to twist them into cute little shapes. And dare I point out that far more people are killed and injured because of snow every year than could ever die at the webbed claw (or the maw) of an alligator?
It wasn’t always like this. When I was a kid, I loved snow, and even longed for it. Snow, after all, meant there probably wouldn’t be any school that day, and I’d get to stay home by the warm fire and, well, relax. While looking out at the snow.
But the older I got, and the more actual encounters I had with snow, the more I came to realize that, in too many cases, snow and people simply don’t mix.
The clincher, for me, was a trip to visit my brother at his home in Post Falls, Idaho, about seven years ago. My wife and I had a nice drive up. Then it snowed. So we cut the trip short and headed south, like any sensible person should do if they see snow on the ground.
We quickly learned two things: Some people like to drive way too fast in the snow, and if you drive way too fast in the snow, you’ve got a really, really good chance of getting into a really, really bad wreck.
By the numbers, it went like this: Over one 10-mile stretch of Highway 97 just south of the WashingtonOregon state line, we got passed by 12 cars. Within 10 minutes, we saw each of those 12 cars again.
All were off the pavement, having skidded into a ditch or field. Four had flipped over and landed on their roofs. By the time we got out of that stretch, we were on a first-name basis with several Oregon dispatchers.
Twelve out of 12. Meanwhile, we plodded along and made it home safely in a mere 16 hours, and with apologies to my brother, I haven’t driven back to Idaho since.
It’s not just careless drivers that turned me off snow. It’s careless people, period. Like the way some people see snow, think, “Let’s drive somewhere and play in it!” and faster than you can say, “search and rescue,” they’ve taken some off-road that would have been a questionable choice in even good weather and gotten hopelessly stuck. And lost. Best-case scenario, this leads to a search-and-rescue mission involving dozens of volunteers who otherwise probably had the good sense to stay home that day. Worst-case scenario, people lose their lives. Or limbs. Or both.
So that — along with the fact I just don’t like to be cold — is my snow bias. While many of you spent your Friday or Saturday up on the ridge, or upper Bidwell or Peregrine Point, hopefully having a safe and great time, I was inside, nice and warm. I did pause and reflect upon all of the good things the snow is providing — mainly, a much-needed huge snowpack that’ll once again fill our reservoirs and help us valley dwellers get back to more normal footing in terms of our water supply.
I even took a quick drive around the valley and was able to view the white stuff from a safe distance. The scenery truly is majestic, and you can’t help but stand in awe of it. So at one point, I briefly stopped, and did just that.
I even nodded twice. And then, I got the heck out of there.