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By BILL THOMPSON
So far we have dodged the bullet. This has been a very mild winter with no ice or snow.
But just last week, while traveling toward the western part of the state, I drove through a very brief flurry of tiny snowflakes. Maybe by the time this column gets to the various papers, we will have experienced some of that “mixed precipitation” I keep hearing about.
Maybe not.
Mama always said I shouldn’t say anything if I can’t say something nice so I’ll try to think of something good to say about winter weather. The only redeeming factor I can think of related to the abominable manifestations of winter weather is the fleeting beauty of a snow-covered landscape. The sight of everything covered in white is a consoling picture that makes me think that maybe this alabaster wrapper would act like a magician’s cape that would, with its lifting, transform this old, tattered and disheveled world into a sparkling new embodiment of the fabled Utopia.
Of course, that has never been the case. Instead of a quick transformation into something beautiful, we have a protracted melting period with the accompanying mud, slush, twice-melted-deadly-slick ice and generally unattractive landscape. So much for the Currier and Ives vision of winter.
Animals sometimes fare better in winter storms than do people. Wildlife is certainly more prepared. Birds and animals need less protection because they are hardier than we weak humans are. I remember watching a mockingbird as he perched on the limb of a pine tree in my backyard. At first glance I thought it was probably the fattest bird I had ever seen.
He was almost round and his tiny legs made him look like a ball punctured by two toothpicks. However, as I watched him I realized that what I had perceived as fat was really just layers of feathers. This insulation made him impervious to the chill and the dampness around him.
I also realized that even if we humans could surround our upper body with that same kind of insulation, our lower body would still be cold. Not so the mockingbird. His lower body consists of those spindly legs. I wondered if a mockingbird’s legs ever get cold. Probably not. What’s to get cold? Those legs can’t have too many sensors in them. It looks like all that’s there is literally skin and bones. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. With so little meat surrounding those legs, how long would it take to chill a mockingbird to the bone?
My ruminations on the physiological adaptation of birds to winter weather are certainly not relevant to the human condition. All too often our perception of our condition is self-fulfilling. If we think we’re cold, we’ll be cold. If we think it’s not all that cold, we can go around in T-shirts and shorts… until we have to go around in one of those backless hospital gowns because we are hospitalized with pneumonia.
It’s a known fact that we humans are incomprehensible. Why else would there be so many psychiatrists making a living trying to figure us out?
Winter weather brings out the most enigmatic aspect of human behavior. We see news stories of people shedding their clothes and swimming in frozen lakes. We see football fans bare-chested and painted like Navaho medicine men jumping up and down in a stadium where the snow covers the fieldhouse.
I guess people do those strange things in the winter for the same reasons other people lie out in the sun until their skin is fried in the summer.
Trying to figure out our fascination with the weather is probably a waste of time. There is probably no answer. Sir Winston Churchill once referred to Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” So is our perception and adaptation to the weather.
I still hope it doesn’t snow.