Free Facials & Spontaneous Skiing

Yesterday, I was supposed to head to the Big City for an afternoon poetry reading, where I would have been one of ten poets reading in a beautiful, intimate little theatre. I’m not sure why I love doing readings so much. Maybe after years of playing in bands, poetry readings are a way I can still get a music (poetry does have music) and performance “fix.” Or, maybe poetry readings add the inflection & gesture that give poems more life. Or, maybe I’m just a born ham. Or, maybe it’s a chance to dress up, which practical prairie people don’t often have. Whatever the reason, I was really looking forward to it, but Jack Blizzard was up to mischief.

It was sunny and in the 20’s yesterday, a gorgeous day and very nearly a heatwave. Ray chopped up a drift at the end of our driveway, and the road looked decent. Guess I should have paid closer attention to the prayer flags madly flapping all morning.

Mom and Mathilda were on their way over to ride up with us to the reading. We were running a bit late when they called to say they’d already turned back from one drifted-in road and a car in the ditch, and they’d try another route. They called again minutes later—Mom was high-centered on a drift. I called the Big City to say I wouldn’t make the reading, Ray and I bundled up, and we headed out for Search & Rescue.

Once we were on the road, it was clear that Jack had turned our little neck of the plains into a wind tunnel and our nice flat roads into a slalom course. We plowed through several impressive drifts, heading south then west. We got within ¼-mile or so of Mom’s car when we came to a “dead-end” drift; there was no plowing through this one. We parked our car, Ray grabbed a shovel, and we trekked to Mom’s car.

If you don’t know what blowing, ice-encrusted snow feels like when it hits your face at 30 mph while you’re slipping & sliding along, scaling one drift after another, trying to stay upright as you hike west INTO that wind...just imagine being sandblasted. I’m pretty sure the walk to Mom’s car did some fine dermabrasion and that I’m now sporting a lovely pink layer of new skin.

Ray’s digging, bless his heart, didn’t help. But the mailman did. Rural mail carriers are the country version of Neighborhood Watch. So the mailman, snowsuited guardian angel, came along with his pickup, hooked Mom up to his monster chain, and pulled her backward off the drift. Mom and Mathilda headed straight back to their respective homes to thaw out. Ray and I hiked to our car (much easier going WITH the wind), and plowed back home the way we had come. The snowy road pic is from the Labrador Highway in Canada, but you get my drift. Ha ha.

Jack thinks he tripped us up. But really, he just gave me a facial. And he helped me field test my Ebay find, a Hänsa-Bränta igloo parka warm as walrus blubber (pic from Ebay, where one is listed right now). And, for those of you dabbling in Weight Watchers, I gave myself a handful of activity points for surviving the trip to & from Mom’s car. Try as Jack might, prairie people know how to take it in the chin. So today, I’m gonna read poetry to the peacocks, warm as toast & all a’glow in my radiant pinkness.