Sub Minus Forty*

The sweeter days of the El Niño part of this winter seemed to have slipped away, and allowed for something more aggressive to move in and establish itself here in their stead. The wind chill was -44 this morning. I don’t really wish to belabour the point that today is not just cold, but frigidly cold. We expect these cold snaps to arrive here every January, we plan for this coming, we try our best to adapt to it around here, but we never really cease the bitching and complaining we do about it; questioning why we live here, and wishing we were somewhere else. My chosen course of dealing with it, for at least today, is to try to focus on being productively active with cleaning, fixing gizmos, and other house work, plus doing some weights and cardio exercise to raise my metabolism a bit.

With some sheepish embarrassment, I confess that I’m probably entering a state of denial about having to cope with this weather. For example, this morning after I brought in some firewood from the outside cradle on my balcony, I realized that I made the extra effort to shut the bug screen behind me as I was closing my deck windows after re-entering. Why? Like the place was going to be invaded by an onslaught of fucking mosquitoes right now? It could have been just a force of habit, maybe it stemmed from an unconscious wish that it would be so warm such that there would have been a need to do that. Whatever the case, it seemed like one of those odd stupid moments that just make me shake my head at myself.

I don’t write this for my Canadian audience, nor for those who know full well the rigours involved with enduring the season here at this time of the year. This is for the benefit of the readers of the rest of this planet’s population who don’t know, and are perhaps blissfully ignorant of what living in a what I would call a hard core winter zone is like. ** It sobers my senses when I do the calculations in my head when considering the geographical distribution of the world’s human population. The reality is that actually only about less than 3% of the planet’s people live in such zones, even with a very generous guess as to how many people live inside places like Siberia, Iceland/Greenland, Arctic Eurasia/North America, the Northern half of the Scandinavian peninsula, and Antarctica***. That makes 97% of you from everywhere else not very well acquainted with coping with these extremes in cold temperatures. Even here in Canada, because of the higher number of urban population centres situated near the southern border, less than 30% of this nation’s population qualify as living in my idea of a hard core winter zone. Sure, every Canadian knows what winter is, but when it comes to temperatures, more than 60% of our population can live and die without having ever experienced its greatest extremes. Now that I`ve crunched the numbers, it’s strange and shocking for me to realize now that there are that many people on Earth who have never actually experienced living through a day with a temperature below -20 Celsius. It is no wonder then that the rest of these people, the by far greater majority of this planet, think that we are crazy to be living in places like here. We definitely are the oddballs to them. It was hilarious to see the expressions of shock and bewilderment after going to a tropical country, and explaining to these people the truth about the reality of living through winter in Saskatchewan, when the coldest they`ve ever experienced in their lives is only something like plus 20 degrees Celsius. It was also intimidating to be looked at as some kind of freaky lunatic afterward once this reality about my life back at home was revealed to them.

Sure, there is lots to dislike on days like these: vehicle engines being stressed and uncooperative, cellphone batteries blanking out, eyeglasses frosting up, dry skin, frozen extremities, the wind feeling like it's trying to peel the skin off your exposed face with icy daggers are just a few things I can think of instantly off the top of my head. However, there are things I can appreciate about days like these too, especially when I don’t have go to work (like today).

So with the questions of why do I accept living here during winter, and how I can even appreciate days like these in mind, here are some of my easy answers for that:

• It rarely snows more when it gets this cold (and at least it's a dry cold).
• Between dealing with light and powdery snowfall we get here versus clearing the wet heavy snow or having the ice storms they get by the Great Lakes and in the Atlantic provinces, I'll take our stuff any day.
• There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.
• It makes you appreciate having a home to stay warm in more.
• The pleasure factor of stuff like soup, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and blood-warming hard liquor increases tenfold after you’ve been accosted a bit by a frosty chill.
• It becomes easier to justify eating and enjoying delicious fatty food.
• It becomes perfectly alright to accept surrendering to a nap under a warm quilt, or losing yourself in a good story on page or screen.
• Solitude in general seems more acceptable. As the elements aren't making it easy for people to gather anyway, through reason, you feel like less of a weirdo for being alone.
• If you are fortunate enough to have intimate company, cuddling becomes more acceptable, maybe even necessary (it can feel gross on a hot summer/tropical day, no matter how much you love your partner).
• A good excuse to light a fire in the fireplace: it stirs some kind of primal comfort in us.

That’s all I have for now. Unlike for a lot of other people, even this weather doesn’t have me yearning for tropical climates. I suppose I’m weird that way. To be strong-willed and resourceful enough to find ways to be happy where you are, no matter what the weather is like outside, and to find people around who are cheerful despite inclemency is enough. Tropical holidays spent being corralled with tour groups, or confined to resorts, surrounded by idiotic people who are complaining about things “being not like they have it at home”, is my idea of hell. I’ll take the peace of an afternoon nap, or an evening by a fire, on a cold day instead.

*- For easy reference: -40 is the equal in coldness for both Celsius and Fahrenheit.

** - By “hard core” winter zone, I mean in a region which has 20 or more days of a year where winter temperatures can hover around -20 degrees Celsius, or lower. This part of Saskatchewan definitely meets that criteria.

***- The degree of error in my estimate isn’t just dependent on cold weather latitudes, but also on varying pockets of Alpine regions of higher elevations.