It's somewhere in the realm of 3:00 AM time-wise. I'm writing now as a bit of a mind purge. I've not been able to just simply drift off to sleep because the howling 90 km/hour blizzard wind that is slamming at my outer wall of my bedroom. It's not at the state of being destructive: if you are inside, just an eerily noisy nuisance. We are in the midst of a clipper that is raging throughout the western interior of Canada. We've been through our first full day of the vernal equinox, and conditions are nowhere near appearing close to being spring-like throughout the time since I last posted here.
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Did I share this photo to show you the interesting
geographic info on the sign?. . .No. . .
Did I share this photo to show you the alphabet soup
that is the Inuvialuktan language? . . .No. . .
I shared this photo out of envy, to show you that even
they have less f****in' snow there than we do! |
A few days ago, I noted that Saskatoon was even colder than the far northern hamlet outpost of Tuktoyaktuk near Inuvik in NWT, close to the Arctic Ocean. I commented on Facebook that we should rename this town Saskatoyuktuk, or something else that sounds more linguistically concordant to an Inuit dialect, given the extended length and snowfall of this miserable winter. I thought it would at least roll off the tongue more rhythmically to match all the other "-uck, -uck" words I've been muttering repeatedly every time I've tuned into the weather report for this region each morning for the last few weeks. After these last hours of the wind packing the snow, we would indeed have the ideal banks around here now to cut out sturdy enough blocks to actually build a few igloos. Given the affordable housing shortage around here, that might not be such a bad thing.
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| One of the first day of spring 2013 photos, taken here locally. |
The most salient question I suppose the locals around this city/part of the province have been asking themselves is: "Why do I live here again?" The only positive answers I can scrape up for now is, at least it's not North Korea, or Iran. I can dress for the cold and snow and be protected. I don't know how to dress for an earthquake, or volcano (Pacific Rim), or for a car bomb (the Middle East) or for a sudden spray of bullets (like what's possible now in Syria, or any American school/movie theatre). These realities don't diminish the fact that this winter has been overly long and depressing for me though, even with the effort to use some of the days that were more ideal for skiing. By this coming Sunday, there will have been a full five months of snow coverage, and still no sign in the forecast for potential good thawing weather, until the maybe the second week of April, which still could potentially throw another couple storms our way.
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| A pileup scene somewhere between Edmonton and Calgary |
I'm definitely not an Inuit, nor do I have the constitution of one. I have this innate urge in me to experience greenery, flowers, or even just simple grass close to this time of the year. The heightened flooding alert is going to delay even that from coming normally. It's becoming even more imperative that I visit Gardenscape this weekend at Prairieland Park. After this brutal season, I would bet my bottom dollar, despite the great delay for planting and sowing stuff, that there will not just a few, but throngs of people there, with near-orgasmic expressions on their faces, paying a ridiculous admission price, to just get a simple long awaited opportunity to smell the heavenly aroma of actual dirt and compost again, and to catch a glimpse of these things long estranged from our memory called "tulips", and "daffodils". The horrid road and highway conditions will not deter them. This picture above of a scene from Alberta won't be a sobering enough reminder for them to take it easy, or to just stay home.
That's how desperate people around here are for spring to come. . . here in Saskatoyuktuk.
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