Copyright © 2006 LeAnn Spencer. All rights reserved.
The depressing news came right around the autumn equinox, the time of year when the Earth stands bolt upright on its axis relative to the sun, and the days and nights are of equal length. The annual astronomical event marks the time when days become short, the time when the Earth tilts its northern hemisphere away from the sun and pushes us into long, dark nights. Temperatures drop, fall begins and winter threatens to lick at the darkest part of the calendar … or does it?
Scientists this fall announced that the Earth’s fever is the highest it has been in a million years – and only about to go higher. Over the next fifty years, with a one or two degree increase in temperature, oceans will rise, coastlines will crumble, glaciers will thaw, robins will sing in the Arctic, and polar bears could sleep with the dinosaurs.
Is it time to say goodbye to stark, white landscapes, and arctic seals? Will the vast forests of white pines be pushed into small stands in the farthest northerly reaches of their range? Will our children know the squeak of dense, wet snow under boots, the muffled shussh of dry powder under skis, the grate and scrape of ice skates on a frozen pond, the dank smell of wet wool on a snowy day? Does it matter?
I remember when my sisters and cousins shrieked for hours while sledding in saucers and toboggans down a packed hill on our farm. It was cold, crisp and sunny, and we were swathed like Dickensian rag-pickers in a variety of mismatched sweaters, pants, scarves and hats. We wore layers of socks and shoved our feet into red, rubber galoshes with elastic loops that slipped over heavy buttons to keep them snug against our calves.
Even so, one of my sisters ended up with so much snow spilled into her boots that she said she couldn’t feel her feet and headed for the house. But in the manner of a bullying band of vagabonds, we badgered her into staying outside, arguing that if she went in, our mothers would call the rest of us in, too. When my mother took off my sister’s boots, peeled away the soaked socks, her feet were neon pink, and she cried as if she had been burned.
Another winter, we had an unexpected snowstorm that closed the roads, and heaven only knew when the county snowplow would clear the two feet of white stuff. We lived on the county line, which might as well have been the DMZ given that no county vehicle would travel across that line into the other county. That made clearing the road to our house a low priority – one way in, one way out.
My father saddled up our pony and rode her into town to get bread and milk or something. He was bundled in greenish, quilted and insulated workers’ overalls, some sort of slicker or overcoat. On his head, he wore a rabbit-lined aviator’s cap with the ear flaps pulled down. His feet in waterproof volunteer fireman’s boots skimmed the ground. The skittish pony rolled her eyes and balked at going, but she was more afraid of my father than the storm. They headed into the swirling snow and across the smothered stumps of cornstalks in the field.
In those days, I learned the identifying marks and names of birds by watching those that came in flocks to our feeder, to the corn and other seed that my mother spread on the snow-packed ground. The acrobatic chickadees, the regal cardinals with their black face paint, the bossy blue jays that tried to drive the others away. Other animals came to the feeder, too, littering the snowscape with their tracks and attracting a different kind of attention. The squirrels tormented our German shepherd, and the chipmunks taunted the stalking cats, and all of them were too fast to be caught. That winter I learned that survival meant cooperation. The cats would huddle on top of the dog while she curled up in the basement window-well on our back porch. They became a single mottled creature as they kept warm together.
In my teens, we moved farther north and I found just how dramatic winter could be by watching the changing landscape on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. It’s been years, though, since I’ve seen any real winter there. We used to get fearsome moonscapes created by gargantuan drifts of snow, sand, seaweed, and ice heaved up by the waves and driven by arctic winds right out of Canada. Buried under the pelting of frenzied flakes, the balmy dune savannas and beaches of summer became mountains formed at the confluence of sand and lake. Like shadowy beasts, they shifted position with the slow undulations of thick water underneath. Other times, they gleamed in the moonlight as if to beckon the curious. The local paper once warned of the dangers of climbing these behemoths, full as they were of weak spots, hidden holes and crevasses that could trap a person until spring.
Scientists say it’s too late to reverse what they call the greenhouse effect, the result of our species’ consumption of fossil fuels. The gaseous emissions hold heat in the atmosphere and prevent it from escaping into space. According to the scientists, the steady temperature rise could be halted, though, with better emission controls on heat-trapping gases, and our climate could at stabilize. If we do not make changes in how we use the carbon-based fuels that belch exhaust from our chimneys and tailpipes, they warn that future weather reports in the 21st Century will not be good ones.
When I was a kid and first learned about the autumn equinox, I used to imagine the cataclysm that would result if the Earth kept sliding its northern face away from the sun easing us into a nightmare of permanent winter and darkness.
Now, though, I wonder how future generations will describe snow to their children.