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Show ai(rj)ini jNo by Nan Clialal Winter: It depends how you define it They say the Eskimos have more than 20 words for snow and I was thinking, as I sat watching it melt this week, if we had a few more words for winter it wouldn't seem so long after all. Winter to me is that dark dreary part of the season which begins in late November, dims our holiday spirits in December and finally begins to loose its icy grip in mid-January. It is marked by sudden overwhelming snow falls, battery-deadening mornings, icy highways and darkness. But these past afternoons with the icicles turning into puddles in the flower garden and the sidewalks steaming in the sunshine hardly belong in the same category. And it occurred to me that this January thaw is every bit as predictable as spring. It arrives every year, offering a welcome respite for homeowners and a twinge of worry for ski area operators. It is a chance to dig out, walk sockless through the house, shovel the roof, shed a few layers of wool and wash a layer of salt off the car. This miniseason, the January Thaw, is generally followed by a brief cold spell and a fresh dusting of snow before giving way to a rash of what the locals call blue bird days. Throughout February and early March the calendar is dotted with the kind of afternoons a fogbound Easterner would give his right arm for. The air is so dry it crackles and the sun slices through the thin atmosphere with an intensity unknown at lower . elevations. If this is what is meant by winter, perhaps I'll survive. But what is commonly known as winter is not quite over. Late March and early April are often dominated by relentless blizzards and bone-chilling cold waves which to the uninitiated must seem like a retreat into the Ice -Age. Even hardened locals are known to suffer from bouts of cabin fever and snow-induced depression. It is the spring blizzard season which gives mountain winters their beastly nine-month-long reputation. And reports of spring creeping into the lowlands doesn't help. The blizzard season ushers in, not spring, which by all rights should begin blooming in April, but mud season. Only the most desperate souls could call it spring. The snow turns grey, the snowbanks become hollowed-out skeletons of black ice and debris and the whole community goes on flood alert. It is not a pretty sight and often it is this last straw which sends the camel galloping south to the desert. But if you look at winter, not as a nine-month sentence of down parkas and long underwear, but as a series of seasons from bluebird days to spring skiing, it somehow seems more bearable. As far as I'm concerned winter is over. W ho needs the Caribbean? I've got my suntan lotion and lounge chair ready for those bluebird days. |