JANUARY 11, 2023 – From space the earth is a peaceful orb, pleasantly blue and green with shades of tan and brown, wrapped in white, whimsical swirls. But down at ground level, earth is home to chaos, dangers, and disruptions.
Take, for example, winter in Minnesota. More specifically, damn winter ice dams in Minnesota.
Ice dams form over roof gutters after heavy snowfalls. Heat rises off the roof and melts the lower layer of snow. The snowmelt drains down the roof under the snowpack to the gutter and freezes, eventually forming ice dams a foot or more high along the entire length of the gutter. In serious cases, the snowmelt backs up behind the dam and leaks through the roof and into the house. The problem can be mitigated by raking snow off the roof before ice dams form but often this is easier in concept than in execution.
This month the ice dams in the back of our house were big enough to be named “Hoover.” In past years, I’ve broken ice dams on my own—by climbing up on the roof and taking an ax to the damn dams—being extra careful not to chop into the roof itself, and of course, not to fall off the ladder. A bigger risk, actually, is injury from flying chopped ice.
Being a year older and a year smarter, this year I hired out the work. For $2,000, a couple of guys—Derrick and Jacob—appeared with ladders, hoses, and a large kerosene steamer. For three hours this afternoon, they waged war against ice and snow on our back roofs. In the bargain, I avoided a fall from the ladder and flying ice shards.
But I didn’t avoid spilling blood and coming perilously close to losing an eye—in the dumbest way possible.
As a “frugalist,” I told Derrick and Jacob that I could handle the mountain of snow and ice they’d shoved from a lower roof onto our back deck. As I shoveled, I uncovered a bungee cord the workmen had left behind. Half the cord was deeply embedded in heavily compacted snow. I pulled the loose end of the cord.
At the instant a law of physics popped into my mind—“for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction”—the embedded end of the cord shot straight into my face. The large metal bungee hook felt like a bullet in the eye. Simultaneously, the word, “DUMB!” iced my thoughts.
ARRRRGGGGHH! My scream broke the quiet of the neighborhood. I threw off my gloves, covered my left eye with one hand and with the other, groped my way into the house. Blood gushed.
With vision impaired, I panicked. As I threw some water at my eye, however, I saw—yes, saw!—that I’d dodged the very “bullet” that I hadn’t dodged, which is to say, the bungee cord hook had struck at the very edge of my eye-socket. Blood had drained from the cut at the intersection of my upper and lower eyelids and blurred my vision only briefly. After pressing a large square of sterile gauze to the wound for a few minutes, the bleeding stopped. With more rinsing I managed a clean look at a clean cut and . . . exhaled.
As we Minnesotans say, “Coulda been worse,” . . . but damn the ice dams!
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
