Dec. 30: Winter grooming

I just typed "Winter Grooming" into Google and came up with a whole bunch of links about dogs. Apparently, it is very important to groom your doggie in the winter because of ice and snow. I am going to assume that Alaskan dog sled doggies get groomed a lot more than chihuahas in New Mexico.

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As for me, when I think of Winter Grooming, I think of the volunteers who groom the trails of the Summerstown Forest so that people can go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing or sledding. My kid prefers the latter. He doesn't care how tired I get lugging him on his sleigh. I am nearly 50. Good grief, kid. Have mercy on your old man's heart.

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Like most people, I hate winter and I love it. I like the first two weeks of Christmas. That is because my birthday is January 3 and I like that I was born in the winter (I was, in fact, born in a blizzard.) After that, I want the winter to go away. I don't like the cold, I don't like scraping ice off my windshield or shovelling snow off my car. I don't like driving on icy roads.

But I like hockey games. 

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Here is one of my favourite CDs:

I bought that way back in 1994 after seeing it at a drug store. It was in one of those displays where there's a whole bunch of "relaxing music CDs" and you can listen to a bit of each one by pressing the appropriate button. It must have been wintertime when I touched the button for Hennie Bekker's Winter Reflections. Immediately, I realized that Hennie Bekker, whoever he was, had captured the spirit of winter. I bought it, knowing I would play it often while I was writing. One of the songs was used as background music in a play I directed in 1996. Another was used as background music for a magic trick I did. I never sought Mr. Bekker's permission for either of these unauthorized uses and I beg his forgiveness today.

I have since misplaced the liner notes to Winter Reflections but I seem to remember this bit of advertising copy: "Winter is a time when magic can be seen."

Well there's a statement that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. What is magic? Why is it more visible in winter? Logically speaking, shouldn't it be more visible in the summertime when there's more daylight?  

But I didn't care. I understood the spirit of what that copywriter was trying to say. And I agreed with it, even though I don't know what it was I was agreeing to.

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And here is something my hero, David Mamet, wrote about experiencing the winter as a child:

The clean smell of the winter must be like a beautiful death - like a fall from a great height: complete exhilaration.

I remember that smell in the back of my nostrils- it smelled like a "snap" - going to school on impossibly cold Chicago mornings, and I associate it with the smell of a wooden scarf wet from a runny nose and frozen to the face.

I think I was happy in those clothes because my mother was dressing me, touching me, and making me warm; and I think that must be how someone feels in the euphoria of freezing to death - that the woods are taking him home.

Well, as someone who grew up in Calgary and endured several walks to school in minus 35 temperatures, my thoughts on the extreme cold are nowhere near as romantic as Mr. Mamet's. I remember going to school one day when a chinook had blown in in the morning so the temperature was above zero. I had dressed accordingly, which is to say in jeans and a T-shirt and a light jacket. By afternoon, the chinook had surrendered to a typical prairie cold front and I had run home at 3:32 p.m., feeling icicles carve up my nostrils and my eyelids freezing. My mother ordered me into a hot shower as soon as I got home and I still remember that shower nearly 40 years later; it may well be the most relaxing shower my life.

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This winter will, once again, be plagued by buggabugga. I am sure I will take my kid out for the usual fun. We will go sledding on the aforementioned Summerstown Trails, we will attend hockey games, and we may even go skating. I may also do some writing and, I hope, that Hennie Bekker's music will make it more magical.