Mar 08
8
Shoveling Snow
Posted by Stephen8
Tags: cold, snow, winter, work
The snow that started falling yesterday continued all morning. Debbie went grocery shopping and returned declaring the roads quite slippery. The snowfall continued all afternoon. I was feeling under the weather, so to speak, and the actual gloomy weather was all the encouragement I needed to stay inside and have a quiet day. I played with the boys, insofar as I could get them to play quietly.
It kept snowing all evening. Around eight o’clock Debbie went out to shovel the snow off the driveway. After half an hour she was ten feet down the 60-foot driveway, and had about had enough of shoveling. Micah woke at that point, wanting food, so Debbie hung up her shovel and came inside.
At about 10pm I went out to continue clearing the driveway. At first I couldn’t tell where Debbie had shoveled. Everything was covered under a thick layer of snow. What had she done outside for half an hour? Oh well. I started clearing the snow, heaving heavy shovelfuls up onto the snowbanks on either side of the driveway. I soon realized the difficulties Debbie had faced. The snowbanks were almost as tall as me, and I had to lift the shovel well over my head on every stroke. That’s hard work.
I suddenly arrived at where Debbie had stopped shoveling, and realized that so far I had only been dealing with the snow that had fallen in the last two hours. I was already feeling weary, but now the work started in earnest. The snow was two feet deep, past my knees. It had to be lifted a little at a time, up over the snowbanks. It was heavy. From the middle of the driveway I couldn’t even reach the snowbanks, so snow from the middle got dumped on top of snow at the edge of the driveway, where I had to lift it yet again to clear the edges. Progress was painstakingly slow.
Two hours later I had finally finished. The driveway was clear. My arms were sore, my back ached, I was weary and sick, but I had finished. Then the snowplow drove past, clearing the street. It filled the end of my driveway with snow, six feet in, two feet deep. And not with nice light fluffy snow, either, but with heavy icy slushy yucky snow. Oh, the crushing weight of despair! But there was nothing for it but to resume shoveling. By now my arms refused to lift such heavy loads, so I ended up pushing most of the snow back out onto the road, taking care to pile it up on the downstream side of the driveway. If the snowplow returned, anything on the upstream side would get pushed back into the driveway, and I didn’t want to deal with the same snow again.
After clearing the driveway for the second time I tackled the sidewalk, 80 feet long but thankfully only a shovelful wide. By the time I was done the sidewalk looked like a canyon, a perfectly square depression in the otherwise flat, featureless, white landscape. By now it had stopped snowing altogether, and as I made my way back up to the house I cleared off the inch of new snow that covered the upper reaches of the driveway. Job complete. Hot shower and then bed, to rest my aching bones.
In December we had a massive snowstorm that kept us housebound for an entire day. Compare photos of the garden shed from that storm (here) with today’s storm (top). Look at where the snow lies relative to the door handle and the top of the rain barrel. In fact, this time the snow came all the way to the top of that fireplace in the background.
