It wasn’t until a friend pointed it out to me that I realized it – I was hibernating. That explains a lot, of course, including why this blog has been silent for so long. You wouldn’t have thought that humans hibernate, but perhaps if we are faced with winters like these, everyone should.
In other parts of the world, perhaps, people wake up to the cooing of cuckoos or the cawing of crows. Here I seem to wake up to the music of the snowthrowers.
The season started off in dramatic fashion – one day in November, we had perfect fall weather – temperature in the mid 50s, very pleasant if you put on a thin jacket or a sweater. We were feeling lucky to have such great weather in November. The snow Gods too, must have thought we didn’t deserve such luck, so that very night, the Gods decided it was time for snow. The Gods don’t do anything in half measures, so it snowed all night and it snowed all day, and soon we had a foot of snow covering everything in sight.
A few days later, we had more snow, and then even more snow.
This is how my deck looked like at one point:
In case you couldn’t read what that scale read, it’s 20 inches:
20 inches
For those of you in India who have never seen snow, and think it is beautiful – you are partly right. Snow is beautiful – when it is pristine, and distant, like on some mountain slope twenty miles away. It stops being beautiful when you have to drive on it, while watching cars spin off the road right in front of you, and others try to demonstrate that it’s not only Toyota drivers who seem to accelerate when they really need to brake.
Soon the cold comes in and the snow turns to ice. That’s when things start to get really dangerous -when surfaces that look clean and black are really hidden traps that will make you slip even if you are wearing your hiking boots. When even cars driven by the good drivers start break dancing in the road.
It’s only January, and the snow seems to have gone on forever. We have already broken all time records for snow, and it still keeps coming. Every few days, or as soon as R clears the driveway, the Gods cover it up again with an inch or two of snow.
So I wake up nearly every morning to the sound of snowthrowers. It’s not exactly music to my ears, and not because I prefer birdsong. Cuckoos may herald the arrival of spring in India, but it’s no lilting sounds that I’d like to hear. I am waiting to wake up to that unmistakeably harsh, loud, grating sound that heralds spring in the Midwest – the sound of the lawnmower. I am convinced I will find the noise sweeter than any birdsong.
I’m only sad that it is still a good many months away.
The Imagined Universe 
I don’t blame you, I would hibernate too, in this kind of cold. I wake up with the sparrows. But I can imagine why a lawn mower would be a good sound to hear. 🙂
You get to hear sparrows? That’s nice, I thought all the sparrows had been replaced by pigeons in India..
Experts do say that the sparrow population has decreased. And I have more than enough of my share of pigeons. 😦
But I do have some noisy sparrows outside my window too, every morning.
Even in the more summer-y places, bloggers are hibernating 😉
Ah, estivation. The wiki entry states that the Malagasy fat-tailed dwarf lemur is the only mammal to estivate. Clearly they don’t read too many desi blogs 🙂
Welcome back, Lekhni. It’s been a long hibernation, indeed!
It was, and I really have no excuse 😦 Glad you still read the blog.
We never regret living in Texas 🙂
See, I knew there had to be some advantage to living in Texas 😛
I love the snow – looking out at it from the inside, when there’s no requirement to drive, when people and vehicles don’t turn it into disgusting slush from pristine beauty. I missed the really bad -20C temperatures in Shrewsbury in December because I was in Boston – where it was cold, yes, but mostly bright and sunny. I can do with that sort of weather. 🙂 It snowed for 2 days in Boston just before we left, which was nice, and by that time, back home, the temperatures were more in tune with the norm – around -5C or thereabouts. We wuz very lucky!
It’s -15C here as I write this (and much worse with the windchill). But it will be bright and sunny (though the sun isn’t up just yet). I agree that the sun makes it better during the few hours it shows up! My Mom can never quite reconcile the concept of having bright, sunny weather and bitter cold at the same time 🙂
Hibernation sounds perfect for the kind of weather you are describing.
Of course, we here blame the sweltering heat for our disappearance from the blogosphere; 🙂
And yes, we still consider snow to be so beautiful and romantic as we sit back in our Chennai heat turning up our ACs.
But I cannot complain, India too seems to be getting colder every December and that includes Chennai where we actually *shudder* were forced to put on warmer clothes including sweaters for that entire month!
Welcome back to the blogworld, we missed you.
Congrats on the new arrival! You have a much better reason to blame your disappearance (heat or no heat) but I notice that you are, amazingly, still managing to blog!
Sweaters in Chennai for a whole month! What is the world coming to? (Actually, that sounds like lovely weather, no? A little like Ooty/ Kodai maybe? )
Thengu.
I do get a little respite now and then and squeeze in some activities which include brushing my teeth and writing! :p
And yes, sweaters in Chennai are a reality now! It was lovely weather and the outdoors beckoned for the first time here!
And ACs got the required respite too! 🙂
That’s funny 🙂 I just got off the phone with a friend who is in exactly the same boat as you – no time for anything but the screaming new bundle of er, joy ?
I know we say this every winter, but it does seem a bit too harsh this year, doesn’t it? (And welcome back to the dangerous world of blogging.)
Yes, it has been been much more snowy, and now after the snow there’s the cold. I’m sick of temperatures that are -15F and below. I am, in fact, quite tired of winter 😦
Snow is pretty, but not to live in for long. I hope your miserable winter gets over soon.
Our summer seems to be around the corner, more’s the pity, though the weather is still very very pleasant right now.
Unfortunately, Spring is a couple of months away at least 😦 Last year it was unseasonably warm in April, (and by warm I mean 40s/ 50s) I am hoping that happens this year too. But so far all this winter is doing is setting records in snowfall.