Rare and dangerous beauty
After gravity, friction ranks up there among my favourite natural forces. You don’t miss it until it’s gone. Take today for example; the climate people had warned us that warmer times were coming (after all, spring has started) but overnight a firm layer of ice covered everything. A rare and dangerous beauty, especially for those that are able to walk.
The short distance from the house to the nearest corner was a perilous voyage. To a soundtrack provided by the neighbour busily sculpting an automobile from a block of ice, I mentally placed my centre of gravity as low as possible, pretended it was nothing more than a very long curling rink, wished I had a broom for support and concentrated on my target; the first stretch of pavement that had been sanded and salted by the city. Oh yes, the city; keeper of taxes and road salt, guarded as if it were gold. No sense wasting the stuff on smaller streets or sidewalks. Besides, nobody walks around at dawn. A few hours of bright sunshine and the nightmares will disperse naturally.
Sidewalks are a curiousity around here. Never properly cleared of snow, slanted so that any slippy means instant slidey, a poor use of real estate. I guess if the price of chalk ever drops, we can use them as a canvas during the days of summer. For the pedestrian; well, as I’ve said, nobody walks around at dawn. So, I stuck to my safe zone in the middle of the road, retreating to the edges until a car would pass, taking the long way to the bus stop in order to avoid the other remnant of winter, a pedestrian walkway between two neighbourhoods. The snow level is currently just below the edge of the fence along its edge. One feels rather like a mountain goat, aware that the drop over the side isn’t very far, although terribly embarrassing. And today, icy.
The whole place remembers the Big Ice Storm of a few years ago, even if it didn’t affect us directly. Images from the evening news have scarred the collective psyche. What if it really was an ice storm and not just a pedestrian aggravation event? I should feel fortunate, as my muscles unknot from the stressful exercise. After all, if I had a car, it might slip and get bent on the corners. At least people don’t have far to fall.
