So this is what it looks like up here at the moment:

As many of you know, I am not a fan of winter, or of snow, and especially not a fan of driving in snow. This actually goes back three decades, to the very beginning of my driving career. I was in my first year of undergrad, and I was attending a suburban campus of the University of Toronto, meaning that I had to drive from Burlington to Mississauga, about 40 minutes (back in the good old days, before the megacity, its sprawling expansion and subsequent gridlock). One clear, sunny November morning, I was driving along Highway 5, an undivided highway but fairly major artery, and a young guy pulled out of a parking lot, right into the side of me. This was the first accident for both of us, and the cars were driveable, so we exchanged information and went on our separate ways, shaken but not hurt. The kid's name was Jeffrey Sigmund. His name sticks in my mind because Jeffrey's dad decided to try to blame me, and since I was driving my mother's car at the time, the ensuing interactions turned into antagonistic telephone conversations between my mother and Jeffrey's dad. He did end up paying for the damages in the end, but likely mainly because my mother won't stand down from a fight.

So, you're wondering what an accident on a nice autumn day has to do with my hate and fear of winter driving? Well, sometime during the week after the accident, once Jeffrey's dad had capitulated, my mother's car had to go for bodywork. My dad offered to drive over to the dealership in his own car so that he could give me a ride back. That morning, it was snowing, the first snowfall of the season. My dad turned out onto the main road from our sideroad, and anxious to keep up, I followed right behind. The car did a complete 180 and smucked into a utility pole, which fortunately did not come crashing down. Two accidents in the space of a week. And this one was clearly my fault. I still remember my father, having pulled into a driveway and parked, coming rushing back on foot to make sure I was ok. He must have been inwardly shaking his head as well, but he was gentle enough not to show it.

I think I spent the best part of the rest of my undergraduate years hitching rides from my dad to school. I even chose my classes to best correspond to his commute (Serfdom in Russia, anybody? It was actually a really good class). And it took me years to stop flinching every time a car was waiting to make a right turn into the lane in which I was driving. As the old saying goes, after a fall, you need to get back on the horse, but I didn't. I avoided driving in snow at all costs, and I haven't developed the skills or the confidence to do it well.

Up here in north-central Ontario, winter is a incontrovertible fact. I don't have to like it, but there it is. And winter set in this week, for the long haul. Our forecast shows 10 to 15 centimetres of snow per day for the rest of the 7 day forecast. There really isn't much point looking beyond that; it's like Groundhog Day. And those amounts are exclusive of squalls, a lovely phenomenon that is characteristic of this region in the lee of Georgian Bay. The prevailing wind crosses Lake Huron, picks up all the lake moisture from the still-warm water, and basically sh*ts snow on this part of Ontario until the lake finally freezes over sometime in January. On average, we receive about 4 metres of snow over the winter. In a squall, you can easily get 10 to upwards of 30 centimetres of snow over a very localized area, while 10 km down the road, the sun may be shining.    

So the weather forecast becomes an integral part of my weekly plans in winter.  We live in a small village; there are three larger towns, each about 40km from here, and once a week I will head south, east or northwest to get groceries, go to the bank, and do all the other fun, mundane chores and errands that need doing.

This morning, it was snowing lightly, but the temperature was near zero and the roads were wet and clear. My Weather Roulette Wheel told me that this would likely be the best day of the week to get out and get things done. As I was heading out, it began to snow more heavily, but by that time I'd mustered the will to get it done, and besides I had to get to the goddamn health unit to get a goddamn bottle so that we can test our water for goddamn giardia. So I was goddamn going.

The road I take to Huntsville is a pretty one, but it's a notoriously technical one on the best of days, with sweeping C and S curves, lots of climbs and dips, and for a lot of the way, water on either side of you. As well, it traverses three different municipalities, and each has its own philosophy as to what constitutes road maintenance (I'm looking at you, Township of Muskoka Lakes) Some people won't drive on it at all. Even more won't go near it in winter. It was not terribly bad on the way out, though I did observe that true to my standing tradition, the opposite lane had been salted and sanded, but my side had not. 

It continued to snow incessantly while I was in Huntsville, but the best was yet to come, because on the way back it was a full-on squall. Add to that I had a heavy tow right up my ass for a good 10 or 15 kilometres, and that just made me even more tense. To wit: I reached down to put the jeep into 4WD and yanked on the parking brake instead. Not recommended. At least the tow truck backed off after that stunt.  We came around a curve and I saw a man standing in the snow with two lights pointing out of a deep crevice beside the road; those were the headlights of his vehicle, and that's where the heavy tow was headed. 

After that, I had the road to myself, and I did the rest of the journey straight down the goddamn middle of it, in 4 wheel drive, 2nd gear, at 30 to 40 kilometres an hour. I saw two other spots where vehicles had recently been extricated from the ditches. This is a road that I know like the back of my hand, thank goodness, and not just from driving it, but from running and cycling along it. It's the last 25 miles of our annual 100 mile bike ride, and driving it today felt very much like that desperate countdown to respite on the bike, with the same dread of hills as well. When I finally got to the last few kilometres, the ones I know best of all from running them, I felt a whoosh of relief mitigated by the worry of ''don't screw things up now, not after making it so close to home''. Getting home to the dogs' greeting had never felt so good.

One week down, twenty more to go...