Cold Weather

According to the almanac, the official start of winter is on the solstice which happens on December 21 at 12:11 p.m. this year. If that’s true, then winter has been practicing for opening day here in Fannin County.

It was below freezing and windy the day I started writing this post. The wind chill factor was 17 degrees. It did not get into the 40’s all day. The next day the morning temperature was 23 degrees. There were snow flurries and sleet on the day before Thanksgiving. As far as I’m concerned, that’s winter.

Winter weather means two things to me: cold and snow. I know that north Georgia experiences real winter weather. The average temperature in Fannin County in December and February is just above 30 degrees. The locals tell me that there have been winters when the temperature has dipped below zero for several days and there has been more than two feet of snow on the ground. By my definition, that’s real winter.

I lived up north until I was 22, so I know about snow, blizzards, cold, and ice. I went to college in Pennsylvania, and I remember weeks of frigid cold and lingering snow. I recall one bitterly cold day in January when a large group of us left the fraternity for early morning classes. Two or three fell on the ice on the porch and walkway and turned back before we got to the sidewalk. We lost another two or three climbing over the mounded snow left by the snowplows on our side of the street. A couple more abandoned the quest after falling on their asses crossing the icy street. Climbing over the mounded snow on the other side of the street took a similar toll. By the time we reached campus, a distance of a hundred feet or so, half the group had returned to the warmth of the frat house. It was like storming Omaha Beach. Casualties were high.

To people who live in the Northeast, the Midwest, or the Rockies, winter in the southern Appalachians must sound like a piece of cake, and I must sound like a big weenie for even talking about it.

But it’s what you are used to that matters. I lived in Florida for the last 40 years, and I’m not used to living and working in the cold. I’m used to balmy weather and wearing shorts and flip-flops in the winter. My body is good at sweating, not shivering. I’m also not as young, hardy, and bullet proof as I was in my college days. I’m sure I will adjust to cold weather, but it will take time.

The transition will be tougher for Meredith. She has lived in Florida all her life and has never been through a real winter. In her lifetime it has snowed a handful of times in Pinellas County, and what snow there was melted in minutes or hours.

Until I do adjust to the cold in these parts, I’ve got to be honest−it sucks.

My oldest son, Jake, drove up from FSU this weekend. On Sunday morning, the thermometer read 27 degrees, and the wind was blowing. Jake and I are early risers, and he headed out to the workshop before the sun rose to work on our dune buggy. I had no legitimate reason to be in the workshop that early, but I went with him. I think it was herd instinct on my part. I went because he went.

The workshop is not heated, and after five minutes my hands were so cold they were like clubs. The last thing I wanted to do was take my hands out of my pockets and touch a cold metal tool. My fingers were frozen claws. I don’t think I could have wrapped them around a tool even if I had wanted to. I bet that if I had picked my nose, my index finger would have frozen there. Try explaining that to the emergency room physician.

You know how when you are really cold you scrunch your neck down and try to cover your ears with your shoulders? That’s what I looked like. I could have booked myself in the freak tent on the county fair circuit as Jimmy, The Neckless Wonder.

At some point I couldn’t feel my toes, and I wondered whether there had ever been a reported case of frostbite in Georgia.

After a few more minutes I abandoned the idea of doing any work in the shop and started a roaring fire in the burn barrel next to the shop. I spent the next hour huddled next to it sucking down hot coffee like it was free beer at a frat party.

I tried to justify my discomfort as a bonding experience with Jake. Here we were, father and son, huddled around a fire on a frigid morning. It was so primal. I bet Neanderthal dads shared moments like this with their sons during that last great ice age. Then I recalled that the Neanderthals succumbed to the Cro-Magnons. It probably was because the Cro-Magnons were smart enough to stay in their warm shelters when it got cold.

Fortunately, it warmed up enough to be tolerable after the sun rose.

The whole experience has caused me to reexamine what my parental bonding obligations are. I’ve concluded that my obligation to bond with my sons diminishes in direct proportion to how cold it is.

The worst thing about the cold is peeing outdoors, at least for men. It’s like that classic thought experiment in physics where you contemplate an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Peeing outdoors requires you to contemplate ice cold fingers touching warm object. That is if you can find it under multiple layers of clothing.

My hope is that I will adjust to the cold quickly. I will need to if I get chickens, rabbits, or other critters that have to be fed and watered daily.

Learning to deal with cold weather is just another part of the experience of Yacavone in Georgia.