Snow Shoveling, A Morality Tale

I don’t know what the weatherpundits are going to call it, but around here it’s already The Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010; most of our roughly 20 inch blanket arrived on the 26th. Lunchtime’s lazy flakes started swirling toward whiteout at about 4 PM and the hours between dark and dawn were thick with a howling northeaster.

Although snow was still falling and blowing all morning on the 27th, the blowing showed a great deal more enthusiasm. No way to start shoveling much before noon, by which time the snow was what one might call “formerly fluffy.” It wasn’t heavy, exactly, compared to some snows I’ve hefted in my time, but it was already closer to igloo material than the original thistledown.

And there was a lot of it, so both of us were out there for hours. Bill started by clearing a path around the greenhouse and down to the bird feeder

And that was the easy part. Next came

The head of the driveway where as usual there was an enormous wall of salt hardened sludge shoved at us by the town plows

The path to the shed where we keep the bird seed

The path from the street to the front door

And of course the parking area, 40 x 100 feet, roughly 16 inches deep. Except for the wind-driven 5 foot dune banked up against the barn.

So it looked to me like taking an angled path through the shallower stuff would get us to the barn door more quickly and that’s where I started while Bill finished the driveway to the car.

and didn’t notice Bill had come back around the corner and decided to take the short, deep route

Even when he’s exhausted, he’s fast, so I guess I shouldn’t complain, and I did hear him shout “I’ll finish that for you.”

Moral of the story: look up from time to time. It’s beautiful and you might learn something.