Jack Blizzard's Last Hurrah

glazed chairs in spring colors

I am planning & packing to go do a poetry workshop and reading in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I’ve gone to Aberdeen several times before for workshops and readings, and each time I go, Jack Blizzard has a nasty little tantrum. It doesn’t matter if it’s February, March, or April—I’ve gone in each of these months before—there’s a freakish winter storm.

farmyard dressed in white

I’m supposed to head out tomorrow, so yesterday, of course, we had an ice storm. It glazed everything with a ¼” of treacherous crystal. I crawled home from an early evening meeting by driving 20 miles on gravel at 25 mph. By the time I got home, my hands were permanently molded into white-knuckle-grip claws. All of this, in spite of the fact that the day before, the temp in Little Town was 73 degrees and female students were sashaying to & from classes in their Daisy Duke cutoffs.

pergola's ice fringe

But remember, we’re hearty prairie stock. Jack can’t ruffle our feathers. Under this crusty layer of white, the farmyard grass is green and growing again. The allium, tulips, and crocus are up, and the robins are busy building nests. I’m already itching to get out the garden sculptures. Ray is finding progressively more “outside work” to do—rake up honey locust pods, tune up the lawn tractor, take down an old barbed-wire fence, tie up new prayer flags.

So maybe it's brain damage from the stroke, but by golly, I will pack my car, load up the emergency winter car kit, stock my backpack with water and beef jerky, and charge my phone. If I have to, I will crawl gravel roads across the frozen tundra, all the way to Aberdeen. My children taught me not to give in. They taught me that the best way to stop Jack Blizzard’s tantrum is to completely ignore it. Stay calm, hum “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” head down, plow forward.

hundreds of snow geese take a roadside rest