To say that I am not a fan of winter is vast understatement, like saying I'm not a thumbscrews afficionado. It is Nature's cruelest torment. And this one has been never-ending. We had snow on the ground at the beginning of November and the temperatures and I have been bitter ever since. As we head into March there is no respite in sight. I have reached the end of my frozen rope. If it doesn't warm up immediately, my own nuclear meltdown will hasten spring.
Everything in our world has a purpose. So what is the point of winter? Why would the great, wondrous design of things include a prolonged period of time in which everything dies and icy blankets of frost cover the land and the animals have no recourse but to hibernate? Man was not meant to shiver and cringe against his environment. It's like Mother Nature's menopause or something. But without the hot flashes, which would be more than welcome right about now.
So people who go around saying they like winter mystify me. I have no respect for them. In fact, I think they should be killed, or at the very least forcibly deported to Antarctica, where they could live happily among their penguin brethren out of muffed earshot of the rest of us saner folk.
But the winter activities are fun, the winter freaks allege. Snowmobiling, skiing, skating and ice-fishing are delightful pastimes, they claim. They are lying. I fail to grasp the appeal of roaring through the crystalline, pristine wilderness on an ear-splittingly loud machine that leaves wide, spoiling tracks wherever it goes, ruining a scene that I concede looks a lot lovelier than it feels, as long as I can view it from inside with the heat cranked up to supersolar whilst sipping a steaming cup of lava-hot chocolate. Skiing, a deranged sport in which normally sentient beings strap boards to their feet and hurtle death-defyingly down a slope violates my most fundamental life's motto, 'Never plummet anywhere'. Skating is silly because if we were meant to stand on blades, we would've been born with knives for feet, and ice-fishing is the most ridiculous endeavour ever invented, since invariably it melts in the car before I can get it home.
No, there is nothing good about winter. Clearing the walk keeps you fit, you say? Tell that to the thousands of people who drop dead of coronaries in their driveways each year, still clutching their chests and their shovels, fit to be fitted for coffins. Being Canadian makes you hearty, you proudly contend? Not if it's no longer beating.
The doom-sayers are always getting our hopes up. Where is this global warming they gravely promise? Bring it on, I say! Why should the polar ice caps get to melt while the snow here is still up to my hollyhocks? I read to my horror that the hole in the ozone layer is closing over as the atmosphere treacherously heals itself. I run through the streets daily, determinedly spraying aerosol cans over my head. Al Gore is just one more lying politician. I'm glad he didn't get to be president even though everybody voted for him.
Spring literally can't get here soon enough for me. I hunker down grimly and count the frigid days. Soon, please God, I will spy that first blessed blade of new green grass.
In the meantime, the winter wind can blow me.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
My Father's Moosicorns
My Dad has been an avid moose hunter his entire life. But, much to the amusement of his family, he not only never shot a moose, he never even saw one. He endured, and still does, all sorts of merriment over either his lousy moose-hunting skills or his abysmal bad luck. To him, moose were mythical creatures that existed only in imagination, like unicorns. But you have to hand it to him. He never gave up trying until he was compelled by age to give up traipsing through the forest in search of what might as well have been minotaurs.
My sympathies, frankly, always lay with the poor moose. I recall vividly the time, when I was only five years old, that he took me with him on an expedition to moose country. It was just a day trip, driving gravel roads in the forest country north of Sudbury in search of partridge, but he brought his high-calibre rifle with him just in case. We were flagged down by hunters who excitedly told him a moose was in the bush nearby. Leaving me in the locked car for a while, he eagerly joined them to stalk the elusive creature. (Anyone was welcome to join in the search - moose are enormous, so in the event that any of the impromptu hunting party shot one, there would be plenty of meat for everyone.)
After a while, out from the bush to the right of the road where the hunters had gone trotted a cow (a female moose) and her calf, right in front of the car. My little heart thudded with the thrill of seeing these magnificent wild animals mere feet away from me. I felt privileged to have been granted a glimpse of such majestic creatures in their habitat, a sight which had been denied the grown-ups.
I was inclined to honk the horn to summon the hunters, but then thought better of it. I wanted to give the moose time to get away.
Later, when my dad returned, disappointed, to the car, his quarry having eluded him, I waited until we'd driven some distance then told him what I'd seen. At first he wasn't sure if I was being truthful, but then, when he could see that I was, he grew quiet and thoughtful. Unsurprisingly, he never took me moose hunting again. It must have driven him crazy that, after a lifetime hunting moose, his son, only in kindergarten, on his first hunting trip, saw two of them. I have never forgotten the intensity of the experience, and I have never let him forget it, either.
Once, he ordered a record album called How To Hunt Moose, figuring that surely it must contain tips as to what he'd been doing wrong. It didn't come for ages. When finally it did, we sat down to listen to it. At one point, the narrator suggested that the listener procure 'a half-quart pickle jar' and pour water into the water at the edge of a lake 'from a height of three feet' so as to fool the moose into thinking they were hearing another moose urinating. I remember wondering why moose would pee in lakes instead of in the forest, and why this sound would bring other moose running. Seemed a tad disturbing to me. My father was disgusted.
"Oh, for #$*@!'s sake!" he exclaimed, turning the stereo off. "If I use a three-quarter-quart mason jar and pour from a height of two-and-a-half feet, the moose are going to know it's a hunter and stay in the woods snickering?"
He had a point, and I learned a valuable lesson about receiving so-called expert counsel with an appropriately skeptical ear. If he'd been after goose instead of moose, I wonder if he'd have been advised to drop Aylmer's paste out of a shot glass from a height of a thousand feet as a craptrap.
Naturally, over the decades, he received what, in retrospect, must have been an annoying deluge of moose paraphernalia on every gift-giving occasion. Moose sweaters, moose hats, ceramic moose, moose glass-holders, moose art, moose cards, and once, just for fun, mousse....all vastly entertained his snide kin while he received each with the equanimity of a good sport and a bad sportsman.
I sort of regret tormenting him now. Just not very much.
My sympathies, frankly, always lay with the poor moose. I recall vividly the time, when I was only five years old, that he took me with him on an expedition to moose country. It was just a day trip, driving gravel roads in the forest country north of Sudbury in search of partridge, but he brought his high-calibre rifle with him just in case. We were flagged down by hunters who excitedly told him a moose was in the bush nearby. Leaving me in the locked car for a while, he eagerly joined them to stalk the elusive creature. (Anyone was welcome to join in the search - moose are enormous, so in the event that any of the impromptu hunting party shot one, there would be plenty of meat for everyone.)
After a while, out from the bush to the right of the road where the hunters had gone trotted a cow (a female moose) and her calf, right in front of the car. My little heart thudded with the thrill of seeing these magnificent wild animals mere feet away from me. I felt privileged to have been granted a glimpse of such majestic creatures in their habitat, a sight which had been denied the grown-ups.
I was inclined to honk the horn to summon the hunters, but then thought better of it. I wanted to give the moose time to get away.
Later, when my dad returned, disappointed, to the car, his quarry having eluded him, I waited until we'd driven some distance then told him what I'd seen. At first he wasn't sure if I was being truthful, but then, when he could see that I was, he grew quiet and thoughtful. Unsurprisingly, he never took me moose hunting again. It must have driven him crazy that, after a lifetime hunting moose, his son, only in kindergarten, on his first hunting trip, saw two of them. I have never forgotten the intensity of the experience, and I have never let him forget it, either.
Once, he ordered a record album called How To Hunt Moose, figuring that surely it must contain tips as to what he'd been doing wrong. It didn't come for ages. When finally it did, we sat down to listen to it. At one point, the narrator suggested that the listener procure 'a half-quart pickle jar' and pour water into the water at the edge of a lake 'from a height of three feet' so as to fool the moose into thinking they were hearing another moose urinating. I remember wondering why moose would pee in lakes instead of in the forest, and why this sound would bring other moose running. Seemed a tad disturbing to me. My father was disgusted.
"Oh, for #$*@!'s sake!" he exclaimed, turning the stereo off. "If I use a three-quarter-quart mason jar and pour from a height of two-and-a-half feet, the moose are going to know it's a hunter and stay in the woods snickering?"
He had a point, and I learned a valuable lesson about receiving so-called expert counsel with an appropriately skeptical ear. If he'd been after goose instead of moose, I wonder if he'd have been advised to drop Aylmer's paste out of a shot glass from a height of a thousand feet as a craptrap.
Naturally, over the decades, he received what, in retrospect, must have been an annoying deluge of moose paraphernalia on every gift-giving occasion. Moose sweaters, moose hats, ceramic moose, moose glass-holders, moose art, moose cards, and once, just for fun, mousse....all vastly entertained his snide kin while he received each with the equanimity of a good sport and a bad sportsman.
I sort of regret tormenting him now. Just not very much.
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