Winter in Utah

I have a small Holmes space heater that I have been using for the past couple of weeks while I am at my computer desk. It’s purpose is to keep my feet and legs warm. Meanwhile, while it is ostensibly warming up my cold feet and legs, my upper half is often too warm. Goofy body.

Feeling over-cooked on the top today made me remember being a kid on our Minnesota farm.  During the winter, the old fashioned wood burning cook stove in the kitchen produced enormous heat. I loved to sit on a chair near  the back of the stove, soaking up the Kelvins.

Between the ages of 8 and 21, I lived through 13 brutal Minnesota winters. Mercifully, temperatures below  -40^oF [40 degrees below zero] ]were only an occasional and not an every day occurrence. However, in my estimation, any temperature or windchill factor below 0^oF was, by definition, brutal. And potentially deadly. And that describes most Minnesota winter days.

 

As a matter of fact, I personally dealt with my own first degree frostbite symptoms throughout the duration of each Minnesota winter: itching and painful toes, fingers, thighs and buttocks.  Sometimes I scratched the affected areas until they bled. I remember many occasions when I immersed my frozen hands into cool water that felt like it was boiling hot. And this in spite of my best efforts to dress warmly—I  was not like some of today’s young people who insist on wearing shorts and sandals year round even during a blizzard—but somehow whatever I wore was never sufficient.

Consequently, at the end of each brutal wintry day, as I roasted slowly next to the great cook stove, I often thought of the Robert Service poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” At the end of the poem, the corpse of Sam McGee is smiling in the midst of the cremation flames, and says, “Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm!” I felt great empathy for Sam.

Of course, I no longer live in Minnesota—nor even in Indiana, for that matter (I also spent 8 semi-brutal winters in Indiana).

Now I live in Utah. Here, our license plates proclaim, “Greatest Snow on Earth.” In the recent past, it has even been possible to go snow skiing in the mountains on the 4^th of July! However, Utah winters (in general) could hardly be characterized as brutal.

Winter temperatures at our house (in Provo-Orem) during the past dozen years have not once reached brutal (0^oF).  Therefore, in my estimation, as long as this trend continues, there is no justification for complaining about Utah winters.

So, hush! 

If things change, there’s always St. George! (And space heaters.)