Cabin Fever

Jack Frost paints pictures on the window panes at night until I can’t see out of them anymore. The ornate ice crystal pictures that creep up the windows are one of the things I miss now that I live in a house with new fangled, double pane windows. Pa tried to sell the old wooden windows to a window salesman on the phone once. 
“ You got any of those old time, drafty, wooden windows? No? Hmmm. I tell ya what.” I am sure the telemarketer never had a conversation like that before and probably won’t again.  

To scratch a place to look out window with my fingernail is to ruin Jack’s masterpiece, but sometimes I can’t resist holding my face close to the chilly glass and letting my breath melt away a peep hole. If I do I can see out how the drifts wash across the fields like white waves and I am imagining I am lost at sea. The wind picks ups ice crystals of snow and slows them in billowing clouds of ocean spay across the open space.  Perhaps an arctic explorer. I wouldn’t be surprised if a polar bear went strolling by. It is quite the contrast to the warm golden sea it will be in just seven short months, a lifetime away when I am looking out the window on a January morning. 

Snow gathers in drifts across the driveway at the end of the shed and the space between the house and the old wood shop.  Pa pushes it up onto piles where I pretend I am an ice queen in her castle, long before Frozen in the a glimmer in Disney’s eye. 

Winter activities include our usual barn chores. The horses come in every night, so the stalls need to be cleaned on a weekly basis. Formerly done on Saturday mornings, this task is now done as needed. 
Firewood is hauled to the house daily. And some years we spend some of the winter in the woods making firewood. Chain saws echo in the empty woods with no leaves to soften the sound. Mama and I haul wood to the truck or wagon and stack it neatly, making every trip count. 

Over the years Pa has pulled a few vehicles around in the snow. Before the days of tractors and newfangled equipment on the farm. Pa plowed snow Dude and Rusty. If it snowed while he was away at work, he pulled the two wheel drive truck into the driveway as far as he could and then walked the rest of the way to the house. After supper, he hitched the team and pulled the truck to its usual parking spot with the team and then plowed out the driveway with and old road grater. 

Winter driving in Wisconsin becomes a survival skill. In the rural country side this sometimes means knowing the roads well enough to estimate where the road is supposed to be. Pa’s parting line is “Keep it between the fenceposts” and this phrase calls to mind wind blown snowy fields that blend into the road.  If you are lucky enough to have fence posts, your chances of staying on the road and between them(Of course this phrase can also be applied to trips home from the typical Wisconsin small town on a Saturday night - and I’ll give you a clue its isn’t from the church, it’s from the only other establishment in town.). You can only keep it between the fence posts if there are fenceposts though. 

One of the best and most memorable times of putting a car in the ditch is the time Mama and I were headed to school in a near blizzard when I was in grade school. There is/was an intersection just down the road where there is nothing but fields and no road signs. Mama says to me “I think it should be about here.” Referring to the road that was neatly blended into the ocean of drifted snow across the fields. “Wrong!” She declared when our car fell through the drifts and landed in the neighbor’s hay field. “And this is why you never leave home without hats and mittens.” She reminded me. We walked home, up the hill and into the wind. School ended up being canceled early that day. It didn’t matter to me, I was snug by the fire in my little frosted, window house. Later that day Pa came home wondering why the car was sitting in an open field. Turns out over the course of the day the snow drifted away from the car and a good share of it was deposited under the hood. Pa’s plan to start it up and drive it home was foiled. Since our truck was only 2 wheel drive at the time, Pa hitched up Dude and Rusty, ground drove them down the road dragging the evener along. He and the neighbor pulled the car home with the team. The heaved over the plowed embankment with the neighbor in the car and Pa driving. Pa slipped and fell and the neighbor had a mild panic attack at the thought of being in a vehicle without steering, breaks, and limited visibility since no one really bothered to clear the windshield of more than a two inch hole, but Pa popped up again and all was well.  I couldn’t see it from my cozy spot peeping though the hole in the frosty glass at home, but I imaged Pa riding on the hood of the car like king. It probably didn’t really happen like that, but that’s how it lives in my mind. 

In my free time, which I had a lot of between school and the few chores I managed to dodge, I enjoyed snowshoeing and cross country skiing to the neighbor’s woods and back. I shared this favorite past time with a few friends. Anneke was and still is a dear friend who enjoyed a good bit of dress up and a trip down the trail. At her house we packed a neat little lunch of cheese, wholesome bread, a bit of fruit and stroopwaffels. Stroopwaffels before they were cool and found in every trendy grocery store - because she is half dutch and stroopwaffels are as loved as tulips I like to think. We would disappear for the afternoon or at least until our toes went numb. Snow blind and chilled we then baked sweet treats and brewed cocoa or tea, sang rounds at the piano, and played games. 

Indoors, tea cups warm our hands and hearts as we go through our days. In The Morning It’s Tea You Want, is the name of a fiddle tune Pa plays, but we still have it with lunch and supper too. Also for second breakfast and another means in between. Pa starts talking about lumberjacks access. The very coldest days with blowing snow that cause most folks to barricade themselves indoors, he meets with gusto because - Lumberjacks. Lumberjack weather requires vast amounts of tea and doughnuts, though the later is a treat for us. Pa comes in from the barn with his beard covered in ice and snow and cold radiates from him like a freezer. Icicles dangling from his mustache and beard. Its nothing that a cup of tea and the parlor stove can’t fix up right quick. The winter solstice activities become a nightly ritual but without the Christmas tree.

Mama and Pa always read the “Old Oak” from the Sand County Almanac on New Year’s. A careful study of the advancing of the years though the life of an old oak tree. Each ring tells a story, just like us, but perhaps keeping a better chronology of the passage of time that our jumble of memories, where no two accounts of the same event seem to be a like. The coldest days of winter seem to advance the year at a snails pace, by fall it is flying by at break neck speeds. A bit like the beginning of a snowball - it is small at first and grows quickly as it advances. The activities of the farm gather momentum as we hurtle awards spring. Seeds are ordered, Pa begins to think of planing time, and what adventures the new summer will bring. Threshing time is indeed always just around the corner no matter how blustery it is out the frozen windows.