A photo of an Ohio house during the Blizzard of '78

The Great Blizzard struck on January 26 and 27, 1978.  It blanketed Ohio with huge amounts of snow, followed by fierce winds and enormous drifts.  Fifty-one people died during the storm.  Traffic was paralyzed.  The National Guard was called out.  Businesses closed down, and people were stranded for days.

None of that mattered one bit to me.  I was a student at Ohio State University, and what I recall is that the Great Blizzard resulted in the ultimate of “snow days” for all OSU students.  The storm hit on a Thursday, and classes were promptly canceled for Thursday and Friday.  A four-day weekend, with no new assignments, at the start of a quarter!  We bundled up, bought all the beer and chips and snacks from all of the convenience stores in the campus area that were open, and settled down for a very long party.  There were colossal snowball fights just about everywhere.  People in my apartment complex who barely knew each other hung out listening to music, drinking whatever there was to drink, and then moving to another apartment for more.

When OSU finally opened again, and we trudged across the snowbound campus, I remember one of my friends saying he was glad that school was back in session because his liver needed a rest.

The snow shovel lift and hurl:  Shoveling snow is like the Bow-Flex of winter outdoor exercises — it can involve virtually every kind of motion and form of exercise.  Lift your shovel.  Bend at the waist and apply force to your shovel to scrape the driveway clean.  Lift that heavy load of snow.  Twist with your torso and hurl the snow onto the piles to the right and left.  Hope for that magical combination of weather factors that cause ice and wet snow to freeze to your shovel, increasing the weight of each shovel-load by a factor of ten.

The windshield stretch and scrape:  Retrieve your cob-webbed scraper from the dusty recesses of the garage.  Use the scraper to chisel ice off your car’s side windows.  A vigorous up-and-down motion works best.  Then, stretch as far as you can over your snow-bound car and scrape the snow and ice from your windshield and back window and ponder the inevitable question:  why do they make the scrapers so short?

The icy walkway balance beam:  Venture out onto the icy sidewalk, walking with tiny, mincing steps to try to maintain maximum contact with the frozen surface.  Then, react with lightning speed to deftly regain your balance when you begin to slip.  Bonus points if you can do a pirouette without falling.

The sleet avoidance car dash:  Sleet is the worst of all weather conditions, a devilish combination of rain, snow, and ice.  Don’t just stand there getting pelted — run to your car in the Wal-Mart parking lot!  And pray that a benevolent deity guides your footsteps, so they don’t inadvertently find that hidden patch of ice.

Remember, bundle up = weight down:  Dress in layers — it’s cold out there!  After a few minutes of hard shoveling, though, you’ll be overheated, your heart will be pounding, and you’ll be sweating like a blast furnace worker.   Your knit cap will be sodden and you’ll pull at that scarf that now seems to be choking you.  Oh, and your nose will be running, too.  In fact, “running” really does not begin to describe the gushing flow pouring out of those red, flaring nostrils.  With all of that moisture leaving your body through every possible route, you’ll be assured of massive water weight loss!

Now, get out there — and feel the burn!

Along the Yantis Loop in New Albany, the wind had done its work, sculpting the drifted snowbank into a delicate, curving ridge against the fence line that stretched into the distance.

This is a day to leave early, take it easy on the roads, and hope that school cancellations reduce the traffic flow.  The first snowy commute is always an unwelcome adventure.

It’s dark when we get up in the morning, dark when we drive to work, and dark when we sit at our desks and turn to our work.  It’s dark when we we leave at night, dark as we drive home, and dark when we walk into our front doors.  When you couple the shroud of darkness with the unrelentingly overcast, wet, and cold weather that characterizes a Midwestern winter, you have concocted a powerfully grim brew that many people find difficult to handle.  There’s a reason why seasonal affective disorder has been defined by health care professionals.

I think there are two keys to successfully handling the darkness season.  First, maximize your exposure to daylight.  Get out of the building and into the open air for lunch and on weekend days, and if the skies are clear turn your face sunward.  Even the shriveled intensity of the winter sun is better than no sun at all.

Second, during the dark hours at home, always have a project to work on.  It might be reading a collection by a favorite author, or baking Christmas cookies, or updating your iPod.  One winter Kish and I decided to watch The Sopranos from beginning to end, and it was a very enjoyable exercise that helped to make the days go faster.  The projects will help to occupy the idle hours and leave you with a feeling of accomplishment — and perhaps even an appreciation for the darkness season and the opportunities it offers.

Umbrellas aren’t a great answer, either.  For one thing, they’re cumbersome and a pain to use in the wind.  And if you’re lugging a satchel and notebook, you’ve got no hand free to hold an umbrella, anyway.

So, I’ve decided to wear a hat and trench coat on foul weather days.  I’ve had a Country Gentlemen Lite Felt hat for several years, but I haven’t worn it much.  This year, I’m going to change that.  I’ve worn the Country Gent the past few rainy days, and it’s perfect.  It’s warm, water repellent, and has an exceptionally wide drop down brim that keeps the raindrops off the lenses.  So what if I look like a bit player in a ’40s crime movie?  It’s worth it to be able to see on Columbus’ drizzly winter days.

Much as I love summer, I also love the changing seasons.  As the temperatures slide from the Ss (60s/70s) to the Fs (40s/50s) to the Ts (20s/30s), the morning walk experience also changes in noticeable ways.  Your breath comes out in visible puffs.  Ghostly white clouds of water vapor billow from the storm water grates and hang in the sharp air.  The light of the crescent moon shines on grass covered with a thin reflective layer of frost, and the Hunter, the Big Dipper, and their fellow stars seem brighter and clearer in the black sky.  The layer of frost makes you walk with newfound care as you cross the slippery wooden plank walkway around the edge of the wispy steam-covered pond.

By the end of the walk your nose is cold, your cheeks are ruddy, and you are wide awake.  The feelings are all very familiar, and very comforting.  It’s grand to be alive on such a morning!

These are two of a number of rapidly growing mushrooms in the yard.  Because I know almost nothing about mushrooms, I decided to see whether I could figure out what kind of variety these mushrooms are — and whether they are edible.  To my wholly uneducated eye, they look pretty much like the mushrooms you buy at the grocery store.

From my examination of the photos and descriptions on this website, I’m guessing that these are “meadow mushrooms.”   They clearly aren’t Morels, Chanterelles, giant puffballs, or “Shaggy manes,” and they don’t have the bumpy caps found in other varieties.  According to the website, if these are “meadow mushrooms,” they are edible.  The website also helpfully adds, however, that there is “no test or characteristic to distinguish edible from poisonous mushrooms.”  Given that mushroom poisoning can be fatal, I’m not going to take a chance on eating these buggers.

Of course, the true test is not whether you’ve added a pound or two eating one too many M&M Blizzards at DQ.  No, the test is whether you accept that you’ve become more sedentary, that your metabolism has slowed to a crawl, and that your weight gain is inevitable.  The true sign of surrender is when you head off to the nearest Kohl’s to buy new jeans in the next size or two up — all the while holding onto your old jeans in the forlorn hope that someday, somehow, you will wear once more your “skinny” clothes.

Brothers and sisters, resist that temptation!  If those jeans feel snug, now is the time to take that extra walk, eat the low-fat lunch, and forgo the late-night snack.  To shamelessly borrow from Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Next Size

Do not go gentle into that next size,
Yield not to shock of flab and gut;
Rage, rage against expansion of the thighs.

Though trying on jeans may cause surprise,
As summer splurges show on your butt
Do not go gentle into that next size.

Breathe deep, make your flaccid body rise
The choice for you must be clear-cut
Rage, rage against expansion of the thighs.

Trust in your clothes, and not your eyes,
When tempted, you must say “but”
Do not go gentle into that next size.

Resist, I pray, the clothing stores’ cries
Older you may be, yet still you may strut
Rage, rage against expansion of the thighs.

No milkshakes for you, and neither french fries,
These from your menu you must cut
Do not go gentle into that next size.
Rage, rage against expansion of the thighs.