Winter Of Discontent
By Ron Marr (01/29/04)
As I look out the window it continues to fall. Snow comes down relentlessly, measured in feet rather than inches. It has done this for over a week and, according to the predictions, there is no end in sight. If the prognosticators are correct, we are due another three feet in the next couple of days. I'm told it is the biggest storm in near a decade. I believe it.
The piles at the edge of my parking lot - once again covered deeply just hours after the white stuff is removed by bulldozer - are approaching 20 feet long and 15 feet deep. The berms shoved to the side of the nearly impassable road by the county snowplows rise well above my knees. On the flat, the depth is such to reach well past the eyes of Boris the giant malamute. Luckily he's into snow. Not so with Henry dog, who disappears beneath the onslaught should he stray from one of the well-worn malamute paths.
Winter is nothing new to me. Hell, I've lived in the backwoods of the Rockies for over a decade. But this is something else entirely. I'm sorry, but it's hard to feel sympathy for the urban easterners who are devastated by six or eight inches of floating precipitation. It's hard to commiserate with the city dwellers who feel lost when the lights go dark. Due to this storm, my power was recently out six times in one day. I am getting very tired of trudging out to fire up the generator, find no amusement in the endless trips to the woodpile, stockpiling stacks of pine and fir that will sit indoors, adjacent to the red hot stove.
But it's not totally the weather that leads me to curse the skies. I know, in another time and another place, I would have liked this. The only thing more changeable than the weather, I think, is the nature of man.
We are a contradictory species, creatures of whim and creatures of habit. Some of us find joy in things for years, before realizing we have overstayed our welcome, before yearning for that which is different, real and true. Others seem content with a life of transient desires - fearing or losing interest in their alleged hopes and dreams with each passing breeze. Indeed, the vagaries of a blizzard are little different from the vagaries of man. At least in my experience, both usually come on strong and then depart without notice, leaving only silence. They leave frozen obstacles in their wake that require an eternity to melt away. They leave only the knowledge that the pattern will be repeated time and again.
Which brings me to now, pondering life in the midst of a blizzard.
I have sought the real and true for some time, the particulars of my personal blizzard going back a couple of years. I have learned that the real and true are elusive and rare. However, if there is a silver lining to this journey, it has been the additional lesson that unpredictability loses it's charm when it becomes utterly predictable, when uncertainty becomes the rule rather than the exception. Excessive caution, I find, is generally little more than an excuse for inaction, a self-deceptive method of risk avoidance.
And so the decision is made. Come April (or thaw) I will leave. Yes, it will cost me greatly on all levels. However life is too short to be ruled by pattern, guilt, fear or indecision. The business is for sale, but I will be gone whether it sells or not (real estate investors take note...I've a real cheap restaurant in Idaho that would make a dandy, personal lodge).
More than that though, I'm job hunting. Not an easy task for one 44 years old who has been self-employed most of their life. However, fate being weird and having an odd sense of humor, I'll just put it out there. I've come to believe that perhaps the real and true is found in something I long ago left behind, back in the world of man. Perhaps both this life and that one, combined and experienced, share equal strength in the equation.
Therefore, if any newspaper or magazine needs a staff features guy, columnist or editor (or combination thereof) don't hesitate to get in touch. Heck, I'm not above asking for help. If any readers even know somebody who knows somebody, please pass along my name. There might be a few places I wouldn't feel comfortable - places where I'm not wanted or where past misadventures still cloud the landscape - but they are luckily very few.
I look out the window and it continues to snow. Huge flakes, piling ever deeper. It seems it will never end, but I know all storms eventually pass.
The few that don't are those which remain in force solely via fear and indecision, those we create for ourselves.
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