FEB-B-4
A HOLIDAY WEEKEND SNOWSTORM OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS
HAS ME COOPED UP IN SPECTACULAR DERWOOD DRIFTS;
I VENTURE OUT TO SHOVEL OUT AND TO TRY SNOWSHOEING
AS I DO DOMESTIC CHORES AND PAST DUE CHRONICLING
February 16-17, 2003
It is happening as I write to you. I am sitting in the snug cocoon of the Derwood homestead, which is supposed to have some major changes coming soon, within this week, as projected when things were moving regularly before the region has been paralyzed---again on the Washington’s Birthday weekend—with about ten times more snow than they can conceivably handle. I had driven the Bronco up the driveway in four-wheel-drive and parked it with a full tank of gas on Friday evening after the last of my long runs (also the first in two weeks!), and set about doing things like the shoveling of all the recent additions to the photo albums, as well as other domestic chores. I had cooked up a big dinner, with the intent to dine off leftovers from the likes of “oven stuffer” chicken and pork roasts. I can see why people who are homebound gain weight, and not just from the inactivity of being homebound! I knew from the forecasts that there were two snowstorms coming, and the first arrived just as predicted, starting about midnight Friday.
My neighbor Bill and his wife Nat and two golden retrievers came over to entice me to go out for a run through the woods along the trails along my streams as I had asked him to do last week as I saw him return from such a run. It is a good thing I did that when I had, since it may be a long time before I get out to run anywhere in this area, since it is now over laden with more snow than almost anyone can remember. I used this occasion today to take down the new snow shoes I had ordered six years ago but had never taken out of the box for inadequate amounts of snow to try them out. After trying hard to figure out the separate bindings I had bought with them (and which has a sheet of instructions that are unintelligible) I laced them up and ventured out to try them. That was not easy.
I could not get the doors open. The snow has piled up over 2 ½ feet since yesterday when I shoveled the first six inches away. I set to work shoveling snow and cleared the two feet more that gave me a path from my front and back doors to the Bronco---which will no doubt remain parked, four-wheel-drive or not—and turned to go back to the house. My path was obscured already. As I came back in I learned from the radio that it sis snowing at 2 to 4 inches an hour, and that it is expected to continue doing so until noon tomorrow, President’s Day.
This is unlikely to be a come and go phenomenon, since the temperature is 16 * F, and that means that it is very cold to be exerting out there—either my snow shoveling the heavy blanket or the attempt to put the snowshoes on with bindings fastened with ungloved fingers—a process I did not prolong. It is REAL: WINTER outside in Derwood, and I have jut exercised as much of the exposure to it as I expect to have for the day, since I know I will be going nowhere tomorrow anyway. Nor did I plan to nor am I needed to since it is the birthday of my University’s namesake. But, at the rate it is snowing, I will have to shovel again as much tomorrow as I did to day which was over three times as much as I shoveled yesterday—and still it is coming down! The prediction is that it will be 50* F her by Friday of this week, but that will be too late to melt much of what is here by the time I will have to be out and about.
One of the events that I should be out for is to pick up Jack Snoeyink, who had called and is coming to Washington for a meeting, for which he had planned to stay in a hotel, but I told him I would pick him up and put him up in Derwood—perhaps one of the last guests I can host before the whole house is broken up in the “demo” phase of the remodeling. I do not know if his planned arrival on Tuesday evening will have him coming or me picking him up as planned, since the major airports are all closed. The MD Governor has declared the state a disaster area, and BWI will not reopen at least until late tomorrow as predictions now have it.
I am scheduled to give a presentation on the subject of the Medical Mission on Trek to Lingshed in Kashmir on Wednesday night—in time to have Jack go along with me for the presentation. Three of my medical students who will be going with me on that same route-as tough as it is in the climbing and trekking as well as the medicine for freshmen—will also be at that meeting, held in the REI Mountaineering shop, where I will give the first of my High Places talks, with a later Nepal talk scheduled in June. I have pulled the slides from my larger collection on that subject at that area of the world, and have many more in prints as the albums are packed and labeled which I will also carry. By that time, I should have returned to the office at GW, and life may be remobilized, but it is certain now that no one is going anywhere at all. I had the house well stocked with food, and I have been cooking things out of the freezer storage, grateful that I have a full tank of fuel and a working furnace, and unfrozen pipes, even as I am expected to call back that remodelers who are submitting estimates on the overhaul of Derwood. But, all of that is suspended just now, as I am working on the backlog of photo albums, which at least Jack Snoeyink may be in time to see, and perhaps I can cook him up some of my superb venison dinners from the harvest of the four bucks this fall.
As I type this on Sunday afternoon at almost three o’clock, I can scarcely see through the heavy snowfall coming down harder than before, and the path I had cleared from each door is drifted over again. I have propped my new snowshoes up at the door, which I had resigned myself to being a decorative item at some future date in a remodeled décor, but it is now obvious that I should get the bindings straightened out, since the snowshoes are one serous way to get out if I either need to or wish to for the sake of making it to the unplowed roads. My next “run” may be a bit clumsy. I had walked well and long in Kamchatka Siberia on the bearpaw snowshoes, but these are the more classic design of the “Michigan snowshoes” with the long tapered stem in back. It is the bindings that are baffling me now, and I will have to try again to get familiar with them on a probable photographic expedition outside tomorrow when it may slow or stop long enough for me to judge its latest accumulation.
The radio has announced that this is well up in the top five snowstorms in the nation’s history as long as record s have been kept in Washington, and they have said that there may well be over three feet in areas like parts of West Virginia or Virginian. Well, they will not have to go that far, since I can show them the cut edge of the walkway I have shoveled to my Bronco in the drive, and it is over that high estimate already as it is still falling softly and steadily. I do not even see my usual deer in the area near the house, cooping up under the rhododendrons, but then I can barely see a hump in the snow where the Bronco is so that the deer could be lying down and have a blanket of insulating snow over there heads by two feet.
I may make jokes about living in the subtropics—but, here I am, and this is real winter even if it is not the kid that will likely hang on very long—like to the next weekend at 50* F predicted. But, here it is now, and since I am well heated and well stocked, and have enough activities that have required this amount of sit down and stay ant home time, I am content to watch it and occasionally to go out to enjoy it and photograph it for the sake of telling those grandchildren I am stuffing pictures of into the three albums that 2003 has already field all a bout the blizzard of ‘Aught Aught Three”. I am sure Doug and Milly and the kids have talked about their visit to Derwood, also over Washington’s Birthday, when they could entertain themselves, first, by going out museum hoping, such as down at the Naval Museum, Anacostia, then driving up the long Derwood drive with a box of popcorn for the evening only to find out that we could not open the doors in the AM since three feet of overnight snow had fallen. Not that I was trying to impress any Michigan visitors with the amount of snow we could muster out here in MD, but they saw that “My Woods Can Fill Up With Snow.” Well, it is happening again, and in quantities every bit as much as it did then, since it seems we are on the way to setting records over those set back then.
PRESIDENTS’ DAY—COOPED UP AND SNOWED IN
And still it is coming down! This morning the state of PA became the seventh state to declare a state of emergency, which makes our state of MD one of the first, and most severely affected. I have just come in from another attempt to shovel out. That is a futile effort, since there is no other evidence that I had previously shoveled anything at all, and the cleared pathways became wind channels for the drifts to pile up even higher. The doors could not open since there were drifts of over four feet, and I could only get at the doors from the outside, and that only by shoveling out. The hump in the driveway where the Bronco was last seen indicates that the total snow is over the three feet level with drifts that are now much deeper. This puts the storm into the top five in history, but it seems that this one keeps on going. I doubt that I will be out tomorrow either, and that means that I may not be there when Jack Snoeyink is scheduled to fly in at 6:00 PM. But that may not be a sure thing, either, since the DCA has not opened and is unlikely to open today, since they cannot keep a runaway clear. The airlines are taking the opportunity not to fly to reduce their fixed costs, since there are none of them in the black and most are in some stage of bankruptcy. So, with Iraq and the US isolation pushed from the front burner by a real “Code White” that has brought the capital to a stop, we have a series of natural events to distract us from terrorists’ malevolence.
ANOTHER FEDERAL HOLIDAY:
THIS ONE IS NOT FOUND ON ANY CALENDAR,
BUT, LIKE ALL THE SCHOOL SYSTEMS AROUND HERE,
WE ARE OFF TODAY, AND CONFINED TO QUARTERS,
YET AGAIN, WITHOUT MUCH OF A MELTDOWN IN SIGHT
February 18, 2003
I am back where I have been all along, with no cleared path out to the circle still, despite several back-straining attempts to clear a path measured at 29 inches when I had cleared it yesterday, before it filled back up again. It has not been worth my while, since the entire exertional efforts have been to get to a Bronco that can only be seen by its antenna, and it is not likely that I could even get out, let alone whether I can get back up the drive against over two feet of standing snow. So, I am not sure that Jack will be coming in on the scheduled flight at 6:00 PM, since the airports are still not open at all, and if and when they open, it will be a matter of anything but regular on-time departures. So, I will be using the phone while staying put in drawing down the foodstocks I had laid in for such an emergency event.
All my photo albums are up to date, and a number of the small items I had arranged in advance for the coming week’s events are stacked in order. But, I do not know if the presentation on Lingshed, scheduled for Wednesday night, is still on, and whether I can get there if it is on.
I am well rested and overfed, and certainly glad that I made the single long run on Friday as a last chance before all the running ways field up with snow. It is a short time until the long races are starting up in less than a month, so I hope the thaw comes along soon!