I think that I overreacted to the weather in yesterday’s blog. Yes, we’ve had some cold and there has been some snow, but it really isn’t that bad. I knew it not long after I finished the blog yesterday as I was in my driveway shoveling show. The sunrise was filled with pinks and purples and even a powder blue. These are the sunrise colors of winter and they are quite different than summer colors. It was beautiful. The fresh snow flocking the pine trees began to sparkle and glisten and the day was beautiful as long as you kept bundled up or were looking out from inside a warm vehicle or building.

The clear skies meant that it got even colder over night. The thermometer here is somewhere between -11 and -13. But it is dead calm. So far there is no wind to make it any worse. It is a good day for some of the youth in our community to learn about dressing appropriately for the weather. There is something in the youth fashion scene that tempts kids to run from houses to cars and then into heated buildings with far too few layers. Our cars are, for the most part, reliable, but venturing out without proper clothing and precautions is risky.

I don’t worry much about fashion when it gets cold. My heavy parka is long enough that I can sit on it and it has a good hood that seals tightly around my face. It is rugged and looks appropriate for feeding the cattle or doing chores. We’ve got no cows to feed, but the parka has been worn for lots of firewood hauling and shows some signs of having been worked hard. But it is warm and I’m all into warm in this weather.

Mind you, we’ve got it lucky. The hills give us some protection. The arctic blast is covering the upper midwest, but our neighbors off to the west have it colder. It’s -29 at my home town of Big Timber, Montana this morning. Add in the 10 mph wind and the official wind chill is -52. They’re looking forward to a high that gets up to or maybe even a degree above zero today and a relatively warm -4 overnight tonight.

That wind can get to you. It is only about -4 on the thermometer in Williston, ND this morning, but the wind is steady at about 15 mph. That gives a wind chill of -22, which is nothing to mess with. Williston is a place there there are a lot of jobs that are out of doors. In addition to those working on the rigs, the truckers have to deal with the cold. Diesel turns to a gooey gel without the proper additives. It won’t go through filters and injectors and engines don’t run. The grease in differentials and transfer cases is thick after a rig has been sitting outside. And thing break in the cold. But the demand for oil doesn’t pay attention to the weather. Each oil well takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 semi truck visits before it starts producing. That’s a lot of trucks.

And they are short of housing in Williston. That means that there are folks trying to keep from freezing in recreational vehicles without proper skirting and insulation. There are some campers that are going through more than 20# or propane every day keeping their residents from freezing.

And having a RV is better than sleeping in your car. There are folks sleeping in their cars in the Williston area. Hopefully they have plenty of warm clothes and blankets and sleeping bags and will survive to tell stories to their grandchildren.

North Dakota winters are good at giving stories to tell. We lived in North Dakota for only 7 years, but I won’t run out of North Dakota stories in this lifetime.

But I am not a poet, so I am condemned to using way too many words to talk about life in the place where I do live. When I get to telling stories the words pile up even deeper: “How old are you? Seven, you say? Why when I was your age I was already 9 years old!” Stories lend themselves to a bit of exaggeration. When I lived in North Dakota it got so cold that we took the battery out of the car and brought it inside so it would be warm enough to start the car in the morning. Oh wait! That last one isn’t an exaggeration. We did do that.

I’ve been blessed with many exceptional teachers in my life. One of those exceptional teachers was Ross Snyder. He was already in his 70’s and well known as a writer and teacher before I met him. He and learned a few life lessons and one of those lessons was that we seem to always want to use too many words. In most cases fewer words can be more articulate than more words. I remember when I would turn in an assignment and get it back with the comment, “It’s pretty good. Now cut out half of the words and keep the meaning.” It’s not an easy task. And I never got good at it.

So I won’t attempt to describe the beauty of yesterday. I’ll just remind you and myself that there is beauty in every day.

I think of the generations of people who lived in tipis on the prairie and when it got good and cold limited their outdoor activities. They huddled around small fires, sometimes pounding the cloth of the inner tent so that the ice would break free from the canvas and fall to the ground. They could run short of food in the winter and even when there was plenty of food, there wasn’t much variety.

The settlers huddled in their sod homes, small, tight and nearly buried in snow. Those shelters weren’t much for windows.

The plains used to be a land of isolation and separation. These days we check the interntet, listen to the radio and have our cell phones constantly with us so that we can talk without any notice to people.

Yesterday I got a call from Antigua. It turns out it was a wrong number. Still it warms me to look at the list of “recents” in my cell phone list.

Hang ini there. It’s bound to warm up one of these days. In the meantime, dress warmly when you head outdoors.

Copyright © 2014 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.