Something Wicked This Way Comes?

With the temperature noticeably dropping and the Sumac and Maples already changing color, I find myself thinking about winter.

Not the upcoming winter, but winters from my childhood. (Although I really do need to get one of my snow blowers home from Dad's place so I have one here this year. If the precipitation continues throughout the winter at the same rate we've been getting it, when the snow melts in the spring I'll have driftwood coming up to my place for my fire pit use!)

When we were small, before we were allowed to go play on the snow hills we were so bundled up it was difficult to move. We'd put on those long socks that mom had for us by pulling them up to our chins, then we'd apply the layer of long undies, followed by our winter weather clothes, our snowmobile suits, our 80lb boots, and the gloves, scarves, and face masks over that.

Then we'd take our blue sleds (because they went farther than the long red ones) and race and/or attempt to surf down the hills, and use them as shields during snowball fights - or for a quick makeshift roof to the snow forts.

And then, when our 50 lbs of clothes had sponged up about 10 times their weight in melted snow (and the chin-high socks had somehow completely worked down the entire lengths of our bodies to become an uncomfortable wadded up mass between our toes and the front of our insanely heavy boots) we'd go in the basement door and stand there for 15 minutes while our eyes recovered from snow-blindness.

Then we'd pull off our wet snowsuits and ball up little snowballs from the snow still on our clothing and set those on top of the wood burning heater we had and watch them sizzle and hiss and completely evaporate in a matter of seconds while we enjoyed the warmth provided by the fire within.

And we were very fortunate children, for The Fairy of Soggy Winter Clothing would stop by and wave her magic wand and our clothes would usually be clean and dry and ready for us by the next time we were ready to get them dirty.

And even though I still love the thrill of hopping on a snow tube and flying face first down a snow covered hill toward a tree trunk... or a fence line...or the jump conveniently prepared for us by the thoughtful young men who installed ditches on County Road 9 for our winter flying pleasure, I admit that I'm in no real hurry for Winter to show up.