What's u up Peeps!
Well here I sit on this fine morning, late night, doesn't even matter anymore. I nap when I want and my sleep schedule is all over the place. I was planning on continuing my book, it's coming along but first I had to sit here and acknowledge the cold. I'm pretty used to winter experiencing it every year. This year we had a brown Christmas, many start to freak out over global warming, just one more excuse to increase taxes on something every year. We are going to pay for it in the new year, not just in taxes I thought to myself. THE MANDITORY CANADIAN HEATING BILL. I woke up to -40 something feels like -61.
Partridge I think? Yeah we eat them too. They are slow and not very bright along with a plenty in Canada...MMM wild birdies
I thought I might have a few weird winter stories. Some work , some just normal living. Since I began writing this 5 minutes ago, the furnace has kicked in twice already. It can hardly keep up. I'm super thankful for groceries delivery service they now have! OMG. That cold would be enough to go on a hunger strike to not have to be out there so I'm all snacked up and lots of milk too (I can make a 4L of chocolate milk disappear fast like a magician somehow, it's not even a week's worth...I hope it lasts longer than the cold snap! haha. Nyways, I went to the store to restock on pot before the cold arrived, don't wanna run out of that either!(legal in Canada, like going to the corner or beer store). I'm good to stay locked in and not leave the house until the temps decides to be a little more fit for humans.
Down east, When I lived in Moncton, NB, we used to get mountains after mountains of snow all winter long. Having a heavy storm dump of 50 cm was rare but not impossible, north of the province it tends to stay for the winter, in Moncton, more southern, it would melt much faster with temperatures being closer to Halifax staying around -1 to + 1 as a daily average temp, after snow days I could climb up to +5 Celsius. One Christmas day I opened the front door and the entire thing was covered, I had to dig myself out with a frying pan and a mop bucket to go dump snow in the bathtub until I could figure out where my shovel was in the glacial mess. It somehow melted the very next day. ALL OF IT. Strange Canada...Why did I waste my time shoveling it again? If I knew then what I know now. 😅
As a kid, in school, it was almost the best time of the year. Despite every adult groaning with the anticipated snowfalls and all the shoveling it would bring along, we were jumping for joy. There wasn't much for a playground at my school, it was really poor...pretty much a bare dirt yard with a few cool toys we all fought each other over like it was a fierce medieval European battle over a swing set. I used to be the asshole that would whack a kid in the face as hard as I could with the swing for trying to steal it from me. It was generally 4th graders picking on 2nd graders anyway because they were bigger, I seldom felt bad about it. I know it's wrong now but. Kids...what can you do.
When winter came, a few big giant dumps of snow after Christmas break and they would come clear the school yard and push all the snow into one giant constantly growing pile of snow that seemed as tall as the Rockies. Snow meant we had something to do and didn't have to fight over. Snow for everyone! Little kids would have to stay at the bottom and build snowmen or dig coins into the ice like peasants we thought at the time.
If you were already a playground warrior and got pushed off the tall slide, ate a few swings in the face etc , well you were allowed to conquer snow the hill with glory and go slide with the bigger kids. We were mean up there too, push each other off over and over again just for fun, typical kid stuff. Of course the fancy kids had a crazy carpet or something to make their way down the hill real fast, especially if we had freezing rain the night before. The rest of us still found a way to slide our way down too even if we had to slide from our behind. We had a trail for everything. No need to fight here. Much like the summer playgrounds, only the strongest survived. JK, we all survived but I don't think they would let the kids do what we did back then. The unbreakable generation.
One year, we had such a huge dump, the snow from the roofs had to be shoveled off because heavy wet snow will make a roof cave under it's weight on a house, the snow had piled up all the way to the roof on one side of the house. Meaning, we could climb to the roof of my friends house as little 8 yr olds with our crazy carpet and spent the day sliding off the roof all the way down. We thought we were pretty bad ass. Her parents caught us and just let us continue strangely.
At home, well if there wasn't any school and my stepdad worked 12hr shifts, chances are, I would be locked outside for that long because my mom didn't want to parent me, I wasn't allowed in the house if there was no other adult supervision. After a few weeks, I had half the yard turned into a giant two story ice castle and an entire network of tunnels.
Part of it was dug right in the bank, obviously the tunnels and the first floor. when I knew freezing rain was coming in the next few days, I would build the stairs and winter fort over top. when the snow was a little crusty, it made some mad snow bricks and they went well together using slush puddles as mortar to get them to stick together well. After the freezing rain, it would solidify the entire thing, at least to support my weight. Nothing ever collapsed on it's own.
I had watch towers, hiding spots. It was my military fort. My castle. My queendom. My boy neighbor did the same in his yard out of builder's jealousy. Hey! how come her castle is bigger than mine? She just a little brat? Mine was always bigger and better because by the time he noticed my fancy icy abode, he would be weeks behind. Our driveways was side by side and we could throw snowballs at each other from our towers trying to injure the other's "castle". Neither one of us were ever successful to even make a dent besides the exploding snowball on the icy castle walls.
It was so innovative, I had a set of stairs and a tunnel that led to every tower and different areas, I could take the stairs and be visible while I hurled typical snow war day insults and jabs or I could pop out of nowhere and change from tower to tower in a flash before he even knew where the attacks would come from next. Proved to be a clear advantage and smart strategy. I was calculated in my builds. Like trying to hit a gopher on his part. the parent rules was to aim for the castles only but deep down we both knew faces were fair game, our mothers just didn't need to know.
Until one day this fateful year, we had a big snow dump as it was normal enough, I was getting ready to go shovel the large driveway to then go shovel my castle. I wake up in the morning, have breakfast. Look out the window and I saw the other neighbor with his tractor equipped with a snow blower attachment doing yards and helping out. I watched him get into our yard, I thought goody! I don't have to shovel the driveway! I can just go strait to my masterpiece. YEAHHHH
The debris started to hit the house and it sounded awfully chunky compared the freshly fallen fluffy snow we just had. I though...Ugh oh. I looked out the side window by the sink. I watched him shred half of my castle away, bit by bit. NNNNNOOOOOOO I feel to my knees. My castle! It was destroyed. He was my friendly winter foe's uncle. I thought for sure he had done it on his behalf. I was so mad. Devastated. I had put in so much work, no way I could rebuild that if it was badly damaged. It would also put me late for our schedule snowball fight. I hate to bow out of a good snowball fight but without cover, it would be devastating to my face. We would put rocks in some of them to increase impact on the walls.
I had hope nonetheless. I put on my winter gear, run outside and assessed the damage. 😱 . Complete devastation of the two story complex and the watch/attack tower as it was shredded in the more open area where all the hallways to the different stairs and towers were, what wasn't shredded was covered with it. My neighbor comes out for a snowball fight, looks at the shredded hill on the side of the house and starts jumping and laughing, YESSSS. I WON I WON...HAHAHAHA, THE WALLS ARE DOWN. Darn, he wasn't wrong. I truly was defeated. I retreated to my tunnels for the rest of winter in shame. There was nowhere and no time to rebuild. the only fort that ever fell.
As a teen, after my return from foster care, the getting locked outside thing hadn't changed. I just wasn't building forts anymore or having snowball fight with my neighbor anymore. I was allowed out of the yard, mostly roamed in the woods. We lived on top of a mountain and there was a maple forest for miles as far as the eye can see. It looks real nice in the fall when the leaves change color. I knew all the trail networks, as a kid, I would even walk to other near-by villages on my own thru the trails to go visit my friends. In the summer I would bike, it was faster.
One year, the fighting at home got so bad and my stepdad tried to strangle me, so I left. It was winter. If I went to a friends house, they would have found me so I took my backpack with my expired school work as it was the second period of the year and headed for the woods. I made myself a little shelter out of sticks and hay, topped it with loose pine tree branches I could find and added more hay. That thing was warm and solid. I built a fire, set up some rabbit snares, my neighbor taught me those skills. It wasn't always war. he was a nice kid. Still the inconvenient older boy but we were friends as long as I can remember nonetheless.
I used my expired school work along with whatever dead wood I had gathered up to build myself a fire and I quietly spent the night in the woods, at peace in my hay "cabanne" french word for shack or shelter, hard to think of a good English translation for that one. A strange moment of my childhood but to my surprise, I made it thru the night on my own in the middle of the woods. Must have been over Christmas break, I think I got thrown out of the family home when my mom secretly abandoned me at school in January and told every one I ran away soon after so I guess I would have been 15.
Weird adult winter stories, bring me to Alberta, where it's cold AF like today. With my job, we work outside on tall structures, that's why I do my best to avoid working winter. When I worked in the middle of the Borealis Forest, it gets even colder up there than in Edmonton. If it's -40 here, better believe it it's -50 perhaps even -55 up there. That was my coldest until today.
One year, I was a student and I couldn't avoid winter work and that's the only job there was as it was a slower year than usual for everyone. Alberta had just finished it's boom years but didn't know it yet. As a starving student, I wasn't picky, I just went with what would keep the wolves away for the time being. The job was long term but I just wanted half a year to get me thru. Days were messed up, hardly any sun the more north you go. Days were real short and most of our work was done in the dark when it was even colder. As soon as the sun would set, you could feel it in the air.
We were all huddling around the herman nelsons gas heater in the tarp hoarding we called a warm up shack, getting in trouble because we are all standing around like frosty pilons while we should be working. Reality is, when it's that cold, nothing works. At all. Propane just comes out like gel thru the torch and ignites everything it touches, the hydraulics on the cranes are frozen and don't work. Any power generators wont run. Unsafe to handle rigging equipment when it's that cold. We learned the hard way when one came busting apart in 2 opposite directions like rockets the day before. The extreme cold causes the metal to harden and is prone to micro cracks under tension as the electrons that bond it into a crystalline structure don't move enough to maintain proper malleability normally expected making it more brittle on impact or tension like a cast.
Luckily, nobody got hurt, out of line of fire but that came launching at workers like rockets we hardly saw coming, we were still a little stunned by that event and refused to use them in -50 or below cold again as they too were also only rated for -25. None of the equipment would run and the tools were not safe to use when it's that cold, nobody moved anywhere. Our super was so neurotic, he sent us all to go pick up pieces of tape around the work site. We all looked at him and laughed. We called him a robot, he only had one voice or facial expression. He certainly didn't know how to get a crew moving at -55.
I had so many layers on, I looked and felt like an oversized marshmallow, I could hardly move yet I was still cold. If you haven't experienced it, there is no way to describe how cold that even is to someone. Just 5 minutes of exposed skin outside and you can risk frost bites. She be cold! Normally there would be a site-wide shutdown for the day anytime below -25 but not for us, we were one of the only craft that normally works thru anything sometimes being the only one on site. We had what we called the Pussy bus, that was the option to return back to camp by bus one hour after arriving and not liking the cold wanting to back to warmth until tomorrow.
With that being said, we were in the middle of the forest with nowhere to go, if we hopped on that bus, we wouldn't get paid for the day. Nobody went to camp for a vacation, it sucks up there. The famous Fort McMurray work camps designed from a prison blueprint, the one I wasn't wasn't even one of the worst ones. Nonetheless, nobody was up there to not get paid so hardly anyone got on it, doesn't mean anyone would go work outside either. Bosses finally clued in and gave us a week of "additional training" and coaching on hazard assessments and other safety training. Luckily, the working in the deep freeze outside only lasted a few days. I can't say I have ever seen a group of guys so happy to get a week of safety training. I sure was!
since I like hiking, winter brings different elements to a location. Sometimes when you travel, you can't control natures thermometer as much as one would like. I have been on trips when I was real cold. We kept missing out on Mount Robson and we kept pushing it off to the side as we ran out of time to do closer popular trails and attraction in Jasper. We decided to stay in Valemount in cozy cabins. We headed up to Kinney Lake at -46. Mount Robson is one of the tallest mountains in the Alberta/B-C Rockies.
The walk takes an entire afternoon with the shortened winter days, we planned accordingly and dressed like it. The trail was shielded by tall trees so the wind wasn't blowing on us until we reached the lake. I surprisingly wasn't that cold as long as I kept moving. Since nobody is crazy enough to hike a mountain in that cold, there were no tracks, everything was fresh and had the place to ourselves. In the Rockies, there is a whole new ballgame of things to experience that can only be done in really cold periods after a good freeze like walking or playing hockey on Lake Louise and such.
Now for the cutest story of them all. 9 years ago, a straggly skinny frozen kitty was hiding under my doorstep for shelter and I opened the door, he ran in like a speeding bullet and went to hid under the bed. It had been one week into a two week cold streak in the -40's. We get them every winter. I thought I would let him in and worry about where he lives later. Well he lives here. That's how you get a cat in Canada. Years later, he's the almighty Kit-Ten, king of the Chonks. He wanted to take his daily trip to the backyard, I told him he didn't wanna go but he didn't believe me.
As soon as I opened the first door and felt the draft, he cringed and ran away to hide upstairs. I guess he remembers the cold days. Don't worry Min-Min buddy, go curl up in a ball and stay warm. He likes to sleep on my feet when it's cold. Canned kitty meat activated foot warmers. Gotta love it. He's getting pretty old now tho, have no idea he was already an adult when I got him so at least 11 maybe 12? Trash kitty turned into a nice house kitty. I still can't get over his eyes!
The photos may or may not have been posted under my ladybug account, the ones that have just fit this story to add visual context. I'm cold just telling you these winter stories, I'm gonna go warm up. Oh wait, it's supposed to feel like -61. The coldest day I have ever experienced. I guess coffee wont hurt.
