MARCH 17, 2023 – As a “glass half full” individual, I greeted favorably this morning’s blinding sunshine off the heavy blanket of snow that still covers the landscape in these parts. I chose to ignore the temperature (a high of 17F for the day) and the brisk, northwest winds, gusting up to 30 mph.
At high noon I grabbed my skis and poles and headed for “Little Switzerland.” I had to navigate the mile-walk cautiously to stay upright. Yesterday, rain fell, then snow before the mercury took a deep dive overnight, bottoming out at 11F. For the umpteenth time this winter, we’re again, the Land of 10,000 Mini-Skating Rinks.
When I arrived at my wind-swept destination, I found the x-c ski track wiped out by yesterday’s weather. Fierce winds left last night’s snowfall in irregular patches of packed powder over the icy, forbidding snowscape. The glass was suddenly half empty.
But when it comes to skiing, my tally system on the basement wall works as an effective motivation—or OCD trigger, as my wife would describe it. My record, achieved in two out of 29 years of record keeping, is 119 days. In a half dozen other years I’ve logged between 103 and 111 days. To set a new record of 120 days, I’d need to log another 19. I promised myself, however, that if prudence required, I’d quit before I injured myself, even if it were in less than 20 minutes—the minimum time to qualify for a tally mark . . . for day no. 102.
A coordinate compulsion of mine is to log a minimum of 750 vertical feet daily, either by way of hiking up stairs or climbing (or skiing) up hills. In “Little Switzerland,” the hilliest portion of the track includes two, 50-foot “peaks.” As luck would have it today, the wind had layered an inch of dry snow onto the icy track traversing upward across the face of what I call the “Eiger” and bending around to its summit. Moreover, the howling wind was at my back on the ascents. Along this 200-meter distance, snow conditions were excellent. I flew up the mountain 10 times for 500 cumulative vertical feet. Glass half full.
On the descents, however, I had to battle against the wind. Occasionally, the gusts slowed me to a crawl, and one particularly icy burst threatened to push me backwards uphill. For a split second I felt like the purchaser of a German 10-year government bond when it had a negative yield (May 2019 to January 2022).
The sustained wind chill was 9F below zero today—St. Patrick’s Day—which for me was the coldest ski day of the season. For four months, snow and ice have masked the earth around us. Even with with the spring equinox next week and ever higher, brighter sunshine, another month must pass before daffodils can appear. As I contemplated life in a zone where substantial snow covers the ground for five months of the year, I could hear my wife’s winter lament—nay, contempt. The glass was half empty again.
But then I thought about the upside of a long winter: a shorter tick season ahead. Call it, “glass half full.”
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
