Snowy cold

In Costa Rica, you ask? No, this is southern British Columbia in the middle of March! The locals are quite discomfited with the freezing grip of winter this year. The mean temperature in March is generally 51F/ 10C. It has hovered just below freezing for the last week with scattered snow showers. My 2nd day here, I awoke to this view of the porch.

After almost 40 consecutive winters (with 2 brief reprieves during 1971 and 1986 when I lived in Australia), I am experienced in enduring Canadian winters. A recurring experience that I chose to forego when I moved to California in 2000. Though winters in Central California do not have snow, the summers along the coast where I lived were cold and foggy. I sometimes wore heavier clothes in the summer than winter.

I remember a dark, snowing night when my mother insisted that I shovel the driveway and as I dug the shovel edge deep into the snow and clumsily heaved the white stuff up to the side, with each stroke I vehemently swore that I would live in a warm place where I never had to shovel snow again. It was my mantra for that winter and every cold, damp winter. While living in California, I made a brief trip several years ago to visit my sister and her family in Toronto. It was late November. As I walked along Davisville Road with the sleet pitting the skin of my face, I made another personal commitment to never visit Canada in the winter. Well, never say never.

I was truly hoping that the weather here would be kind to me (and everyone else.)

After shoveling the driveway, scraping the ice from the car windows and nearly slipping on ice, (the trifecta of winter living) I realized that the universe was laughing at me. I’ll just have to get into the humor of the joke. It’s an adjustment living inside almost 24 hours a day. Our house in CR is designed for outdoor living. We start the day with a coffee on the upper deck, work around the property until the height of the day, relax at siesta time on the ground floor terrace, then putter around the property at sunset when the temperature cools off. We spend almost 12 hours a day outside (sunrise to sunset.) Here, I’m managing a 2 hour walk around the neighborhood. Though there were a couple of days when the brisk wind threatened frostbite to my nose. All this torture is an attempt to keep up a level of fitness. Our property is a couple of acres with rolling elevations. Walking around the property to harvest fruit and veggies is an aerobic activity. No puttering around the yard here. The quail are very busy tough, I see them scurrying through the snow from bush to bush with their topknot feather bouncing.

Generally, the routine is going from house to garage to car to a parking lot with a short outdoor walk to inside a building. Due to the invasive nature of cold, we HAVE to wear layers of clothing. The house, cars and buildings are heated. Yet, in the short distance between these, the cold can sear deep into your bones.

Between Mom & Rob's extensive outdoor wardrobe, I have an ensemble of outside gear. I wore my hiking boots thinking that if there were snow, they would be handy. Also in CR, I don't have any footwear other than flip flops. Each day, I bundle up with 2 shirts, a huge thick sweater, a vest, a jacket, the charming hat pictured here, a scarf and gloves. This outfit is quite comfortable except for the exposed skin around my face. When walking into the wind, I pull my scarf up above my nose but then my nose starts to drip and my breath dampens the scarf. It becomes a drippy, cold mess. Ugh! I miss my t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops "uniform."

Once I get myself motivated, dressed and out the door, the walks are very scenic. The town sits across a long lake in a valley between 2 low mountain ranges. Walking around the neighborhood, I can look far up along the ridges and remember when M and I hiked up there a couple of years ago in 90F/30C weather.

There is a very lovely, paved trail that starts a short distance from the house. It follows the old irrigation canal that was built for the orchards. The orchards with dormant fruit trees run along one side of the trail with the view of the mountain ridge along the other side. It is a 6.8 mile route from the house to the airport and back. Along the way, I meet other walkers with their very friendly dogs.

I don't mean to complain or sound whiny. I appreciate the beauty of this existence. For millions of people in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a fact of life that the temperature will plummet to -35C and soar to a heat-stroke inducing 40C. All within a few months and repeat the pattern over and over each year. It's just that I'm grateful and fortunate that I can choose not to ride that weather rollercoaster.