Winter

Our Sunday Scribblings Prompt was "Winter"

The coldest winters I ever spent were in Gunnison, Colorado.
True...true... with the sun shining brightly, and hardly any wind, it didn't always look cold. But it was.

I remember crossing the Gunnison River on the way to school. Some days it was generating steam like a nuclear power plant...chunks of ice floating throughout. The steering wheel under my gloved hands was so cold it made my bones hurt, and the seat beneath me was firm, like a bench of stone. Even though the engine had been plugged in all night, the car was slow to shift gears--fluids were like refrigerated honey, I guess.

My daughter had learned the hard way not to wash her hair in the morning. One morning it froze on the way out to the school bus. Not realizing that, she reached up and grabbed it, only to feel a chunk of hair break off into her hand.

We wore long underwear beneath our clothes...all winter long, even under the long dresses that we wore to church, where we sat on heated pews. Nobody stayed home because of the weather. I remember one Sunday when the temperature was thirty six degrees below zero. We were all there. Just another Gunnison cold day.

With winter came white streets. They stayed white until April, and those who cleared the snow had to pile it high in a snow yard, because it would never melt, not until May or June even. There was lots of sledding and ice skating and snowboarding in the cold, cold sunshine, but if you held your coffee cup in your hand too long, you would see it ice over on top.

In the basement, frost began creeping up all the outside walls, making us realize why water lines needed to be buried deeper than ten feet.

Summer was slow to arrive and always seemed like an uncomfortable visitor, cringing under occasional snow flurries that were dashed in her face. Dahlias bloomed with a crisp intensity, bold and beautiful, throwing all the energy they possessed into the few short weeks they were outside...so did all the other flowers. There was no spring...just less wintery winter. . .fall was golden aspen leaves sprinkled liberally with snow dust...short and powerless to stop the coming cold white world of winter.

So how did we survive four years there? Well, inside was reasonably warm...standing around the fire...and the people were warm...no winter in those friendships. It makes all the difference.