Monday’s Clean Scene

Good morning everyone! Here in Sask it’s a dazzling Monday morning — the perfect opportunity to stay home and enjoy family life or visit friends online. And we have some great writing prompts to work with:

Ragtag Daily Prompt: TOUGH
Your Daily Word Prompt: CAPABLE
Word of the Day Challenge: TRIUMPH
Fandango’s FOWC: HYSTERICAL

I can picture farmers all over this region looking outside and smiling. That which we have longed for all summer — more precipitation — has come to pass by the bucket-full. Above and beyond our fondest wish. I hear that a number of highways were shut down yesterday because of the blizzard, so it isn’t only our area that’s enjoying the bounty. Now the wild wind has ceased, the sun has come out and we can enjoy the brilliance of our scenery.

This is perfect COVID weather, you could say: a great opportunity to self-isolate. All across the province schools will be closed today, repurposed as polling stations for municipal elections. So children don’t have to straggle to school through the snowbanks; teachers and school bus drivers can put their feet up until the road have been properly cleared. Yesterday’s wind straight from the north piled a big bank of snow, maybe a metre deep, right in front of our garage door, so we’re not going anywhere very soon, either.

Getting about will be tough for some this morning, but prairie folk are a hardy lot and we now have equipment more than capable of blasting through snowbanks. Our son-in-law and his little crew are occupied at that very task this morning. The Dept of Highways crews will be on the job, too. School yards will be cleared so voters can get to polls.

Thinking of the homesteaders who settled this land, a storm like this might have shut them down for weeks. Yesterday, as I tried to shove our outside screen door open with a foot of hard-packed snow piled against it, I thought of one account I read. Early settlers soon discovered that your cabin door must open inward — because, depending on the direction of the wind, a storm may pack five or six feet of snow against it! Some folks with “a delicate mental state” became hysterical finding themselves embalmed in a white cocoon.

One of the Neatby family tells in his memoir about how, the morning after a snowstorm, they tried to open their cabin door and found the storm had closed it tight with several feet of hard-packed snow. They managed to shove it open just enough to scoop handfuls from that wall of snow, melting them on the stove. Thus they worked most of the day, inch by inch, until it was open far enough that they could get out. After a moment to celebrate their triumph, the boys floundered through the snowbanks to feed their livestock. Yes, those were tough times, but most homesteaders persevered. The options were few back then.

Before the settlers came, the natives found a sheltered valley where they could set up their teepees and relax until spring came again. They didn’t have the rush-rush mindset of the Europeans and were content to wrap up in buffalo robes, sit and visit around the fire, tell stories. I wonder if they ever had election results to discuss? Talking about the weather would get old fast.

No car, no phone, no internet. No housework to speak of. No novel, notebook, or jigsaw puzzle. I fear most of us would go bananas, crackers, completely bonkers — barmy, the Brits would say — after a couple of days of this kind of relaxation. 🙂