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On Snow, Cold and Winter |
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Written by By Jim Findley
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Sunday, 07 January 2007 |
On the phone the morning, after our first good snowfall, a neighbor
asked “Will you write about this?” My mind asked “About what?”
But of course she referred to the heavy snow. “We’ve lived in
Corrales 10 years and never seen anything like this!” she said.
I had to exercise careful control to avoid slipping into a form of what
Jim Belshaw (Albuquerque Journal, Dec. 20) recently characterized as
snow snobbery. This is the superior attitude, adopted by
immigrants from northern parts of the country, when, in response to a
trifling snow event, the locals close schools and government offices
and cover the streets with fender benders.
Being a northern immigrant myself I could easily indulge in this
stuff. In South Dakota it dropped to -30° F many nights this time
of year. The snow was two feet deep (or was it four feet?), and
the kids drew designs in the frost on the inside walls of their
bedroom.
But one need not refer to other times and places to be a successful
snow snob. In fact, there is plenty of material to be drawn on
right here in little old Corrales that allows one to practice a local
variant, usually referred to as Old Timer snobbery. An example
follows.
In 1960-61 we spent a lot of time building a little house in
Corrales. By December 1961, we were ready to abandon our
store-bought house in the Albuquerque Northeast Heights and move, with
our four kids, into our 25 x 40 foot, flat-roofed adobe house in a
patch of sand and small cottonwoods between the Interior Drain and the
river.
The day we moved the ground was snow-covered. On our first night
in the house the temperature dropped to -11° F. Tommie and I were
apprehensive young parents. We hadn’t any experience in building
houses, and we didn’t know if our little place would really protect us
against the rigorous Corrales weather. The roof/ceiling was made
of rough-sawn lumber (two and a half cents a board foot) supported by
round vigas (15 27-footers at $8.10 each; sawn beams were much more
expensive), covered with roofing felt and granite-surfaced roofing
paper ($59.39) and a foot of dirt (free). Our heating was
provided by a kerosene space heater ($28.62 including stovepipe and a
roof jack) and a wood-burning cook stove (purchased by Tommie for
$29.00, not including the $6.75 for stovepipe). In all, we had
spent $3,041.05 on the house by moving day, and we owed nothing.
As it turned out, as the night time temperature plunged to Arctic
lows, and the frozen snow glittered, our little place was warmer and
cozier than our house in the heights, with its central heating and
commercial insulation, had ever been.
But for genuine, born-in-Corrales Old Timer snobbery ammunition, it
would be hard to beat the winter of 1970-71. In that season a
heavy snow blanketed the village, and the temperature dropped to -25°
F, not just once, but every night for a week. In Grants the low
was reported as -54°. No cars or trucks started. Corrales
was quiet except for the occasional crack of a breaking snow-laden
branch.
We had planted ten Arizona cypresses the previous summer, and all but
one of them died during that week. Eastern immigrants, who
thought they were moving to a subtropical desert, and who planted
typical warm-desert plants, lost them all. A friend who lived in Las
Cruces had planted a saguaro cactus in his yard, as had many people in
that southern city. These imports from Arizona froze solid that week,
and when it thawed they collapsed into piles of decaying mush. (And
that’s why saguaros aren’t native to New Mexico.)
In our efforts to upgrade our place in the ensuing years, we
inadvertently provided protection against severe weather for some of
the local wildlife.
Even though our flat dirt roof was very efficient as a thermal barrier,
it had some drawbacks when it came to rain. One of its problems
was caused by doodlebugs.
Doodlebugs, also known as ant-lions, are the young of graceful,
dragon-fly-like winged insects. The doddlebugs are not winged, but they
possess fearsome pincer-like jaws. The bugs burrow in sand, and situate
themselves at the bottom of funnel-shaped pits that they construct. If
an ant tumbles into this pit, the loose sand makes it difficult to
climb out. The waiting doodlebug showers the victim with jets of sand
until it falls to the bottom of the pit where it is captured and
consumed.
Doodlebugs, it turns out, love flat, dirt-covered roofs, and we
should be glad that they are up there catching ants. Trouble is,
each little ant-lion pit acts as a tiny funnel that guides water
through the dirt to the underlying roof decking. The attentive
house-holder must be sure to walk the roof before it rains, stomping
doodlebug holes.
So for this and other reasons we eventually removed the dirt and
constructed a pitched tin roof over the old flat one, and insulated
with commercial rock-wool insulation.
Into the warm, secure, insulation-filled place between the tin and the
wood a mother raccoon soon found her way. There she bore her
family of four little coonlets who, in due course, could be heard at
night scampering over the tin. Then they would hang their heads over
the eaves and peer through the windows to check our activities in the
house. They were really, really cute, and even though we didn’t
want them living in the attic, as parents ourselves we decided to
let the coons stay until their kids were raised.
But somehow when the youngsters left I didn’t get around to closing up
the coon access, and before we knew it another year had rolled around,
with another coon-mom, and another batch of cute, cute coon babies.
In fact, quite a few years rolled by, and multiple generations of
little coons were raised in our roof, and established their traditional
foraging routes over the roof and around the farm.
They never were really any bother. Sometimes a slight coon-odor
could be detected in the attic, and that caused the dogs great
excitement. Once a baby coon fell down the fireplace chimney and left
little sooty coon-prints all over the dining room.
We were quite used to hearing them gallop thunderously across the tin
roof in the evening. Coons, as well as many other mammals,
including people, learn pathways that are frequently used and follow
them automatically, paying little conscious attention to where they are
going.
On one occasion I removed a rather large cottonwood branch that was
overhanging the roof. As it turned out, that branch was an
integral part of an established coon-route. The coons would run along
the living-room ridge, then leap from the gable to the branch which
they followed to the main trunk and so to the ground.
We were sitting reading one evening when we heard the familiar clumping
of a coon running along the living-room roof, then a pause, then a
tremendous crash right over our heads as the animal missed the missing
branch and plummeted onto a lower section of roof.
I realize that we shouldn’t have allowed these animals to live in our
house all those years, that we shouldn’t have allowed their family,
over many generations, to integrate our place into their nightly lives.
But I couldn’t escape the thought that I should somehow have warned
them that I was removing that branch.
Well, all this came about from a willingness to share a warm, cozy, shelter against snow and cold winter weather.
Less understandable or excusable perhaps, is our plastic-lined
underground skunk-ground squirrel-rabbit shelter, the background for
which follows.
Originally much of our place was sand. Then we started ditch
irrigation and raised alfalfa. Then we switched part of it to pasture
grass and raised cows. Then we got out of the cow business and started
mowing the pasture, which eventually became a lawn. Then, to ease
ditch maintenance, I ran part of the ditch through a ten-inch PVC pipe
and covered it up. Then I installed sprinklers in the lawn and
abandoned the underground pipe. But I didn’t really
think to cover up the old turnouts from the ditch. Our
little wildlife neighbors soon realized that, once again, those nice
Findleys were providing secure, well-constructed shelter against the
cold and snow and started moving in to the underground system.
Skunks, cottontails, and rock squirrels have all lived, simultaneously
or in succession, in various sections of that old ditch. Skunks
and rock squirrels, but probably not the rabbits, have raised their
families there. These occupancies have been especially
frustrating for the dogs, who are accustomed to digging up the burrows
of small mammals. But the PVC is pretty dog-proof, and the little
critters sit safely down below while the pooches scratch and fume above.
On summer evenings we enjoy watching the skunks and their kids foraging
for June beetle larvae on the lawn, and take comfort in the knowledge
that the occasional heavy rain will not penetrate the plastic to dampen
those little skunklets.
We get slightly less fun from observing the ravages to the lettuce
patch perpetrated by those (cute) bunnies. But there is almost no
joy at all in coming upon a melon or squash that has been eviscerated
by the (somewhat less cute) rock squirrels.
The nadir of wildlife enjoyment was experienced by a neighbor whose
mother’s old sedan was attacked by the squirrels. Those frisky rodents
collected much of the fine wiring, leaving the car electronically
inert. Well, the neighbor moved a half-mile away (not because of
the squirrels or our nurturing of them) where he is free to deal with
the problem as he sees fit.
Having written all of the foregoing after that first good snow, I let
the essay sit for a couple of days during which our second great snow
arrived. Snow depth measured 14 inches on the level. A Russian
olive fell across our road. The paper delivery man couldn’t reach the
last four families. The next day they didn’t even try to deliver the
paper. No little animals peered from their plastic- or insulation-lined
shelters.
But heck! The temperature only dropped to 14.7° on our porch
(why, I can remember the winter of ’70-’71). Nonetheless, careful
polling of the family reveals that no one remembers a snow this heavy.
So, grudgingly, we are forced to admit everyone now living in Corrales
to the exclusive club. Next winter, if we have a little snow,
every member of the club is entitled to affect a slightly supercilious
sneer while proclaiming:
“This is nothing! Why, in the winter of ’06-’07 we were buried,
and the power went out. We couldn’t get to work, and . . . !”
What great fun we’ll have! |
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