Winter is coming and I wish I didn’t care.
It snows, and snows, and snows, and we adapt to the dangerous driving, and to the shoveling, and to the layers of bulky stupid clothing. We (somehow) put up with the sub zero temps and the cold appendages. Hot soups, chili and hot chocolate becomes daily staples. We yearn for the weekend when we can try our best at shutting out the dead winter and hibernating in pj’s and blankets.
We tell ourselves, whether subconsciously or not, that living in Alberta is actually worth the seven months of cold, snowy, dark, long winter each and every year, and somehow each winter is worse than the one previous.
I don’t doubt that there are reasons, if not many reasons, keeping people here such as work, family or just the fact that Alberta is so prosperous. Some feel that they are called to live here, for one purpose or another. But is it really worth it, year in year out, to deal with such a long, nightmarish, dangerous time like an Albertan winter?? I feel it is not.
This will be my last Alberta winter, hopefully ever, and I still dread this one that will hit any day now. But at least I have the knowledge that this is friggin it.
Give me long periods of rain. Give me extended weeks of heat. Give me swarming busy cities. Give me the occassional earthquake. But you can keep your long, snowy winters.
Family and friends? Yes, they will be missed. But with texting, facetime and Skype it’ll be alright.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t found “my place” here in Alberta. But that only gives me more hope and happiness in leaving. I’m a huge “to each their own” kind of guy so by all means, if you’re passionate about this place and easily accept the winters, all the power to ya.
As for me, screw this crap. Every morning I wake during this winter and have to shovel for an hour to get out of my driveway, and every time I want to leave but have to brush off my car then let it run for ten minutes before considering going anywhere, and every time I drive a patch of highway way under the speed limit with vehicles littered in the ditches around me… I will remind myself that this is the end of this horror show for me.
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