Allegory of the Frozen Lake

Bear with me…   2/10/2012 I’m writing this from a Starbucks in Plover, Wisconsin, about 90 minutes northwest of Madison, where I now live. My fiancée and I are heading up to spend the weekend with some generous, employed friends in a cabin their family owns. In the first half hour or so on the drive out, we plowed our way through the first really furious snowstorm of the season, driving about 40 mph on 1-39. By the time we got here, though, the sun had come out, even as it began to set, casting on the snow the sort of pink usually reserved for Photoshopped postcards of Key West. Another thing about the snow up here: in the shopping center there are of course giant, plow-swept piles of gunmetal slush, but as you get further out into the country — which we did, before we realized that we had taken the wrong exit for the Stevens Point Brewing Company — there is more room for the wind to work. As a result, the snow becomes a sort of fine powder, and wafts across the road in ephemeral, unidirectional rivulets. If you had no body heat, it would sift through your fingers like sand, or espresso grounds. It looks so inviting, you might risk the cold and try. There is so much to be excited about in our country right now. There is also so much to be angry, depressed and discouraged about, and these things oftentimes flow from, as well as into, one another. This Zoroastrian back-and-forth has been pretty well embodied by a few recent upheavals in this nation, situations that bridge sectors of politics, healthcare, religion and human rights, and the details of which I will not get into here. And let’s be clear on this: some of these sectors should not bleed over into each other, though I realize that to commit to such a statement is idealistic at best, naïve at worst and perhaps completely disregards the complexity of both the human animal, as well as our current cultural zeitgeist. The hell with it. I started this piece with a lyrical meditation on the Wisconsin landscape, so if I uproot myself from the earth for a few minutes at a time, you’ll excuse me.   2/11/2012 It’s futile to waste time dissecting the intricacies of the winter climates in Georgia and Wisconsin. There are no intricacies: You can wear shorts in Georgia during February and not be considered a screaming lunatic, while here in Steven’s Point your nose hairs can freeze just walking 20 feet from the house to the car. Look, snow is snow. But it’s this marked difference between circumstances that can illuminate the gap between how residents of each place regard it. I’m from Georgia, and lived most of my life far removed from winter freezes. Because of that, I romanticized them, would watch kids having snowball fights in Christmas movies and get jealous. Even on the few occasions I was able to play in snow — we lived in Nashville, 400 miles north, for a few years — the cold was rarely so severe as to be physically or socially limiting. Snowballs impacted softly, and only the ice melting during the daily thaw was at all dangerous. Today Michelle and I walked the circumference — maybe a quarter-mile — around the frozen surface of Blue Mountain Lake. I was bundled in two pairs of wool socks, a thermal shirt, wool sweater, wool pea coat, wool cap and Thinsulate gloves. But I had forgotten, unlike Michelle, to bring my two scarves: one for my neck, one to wrap around the lower half of my face. By the time we stepped back onto the dock, my mouth was so cold it had become difficult shaping words, and I began to slur, like a drunk.   2/12/2012 Here, the cold hardens people, compresses them into uncut, unpolished diamonds. You only notice it, I think, at first, which is why the fact is so apparent to me right now. After awhile, your skin can chafe stone, instead of the other way around. Even then, it’s only a practical sort of toughness. The cold snap comes: you make sure the wool blanket, de-icer and ice scraper are in your car. When the cat wants to go out, you don’t let him, no matter how much he cries or screams at you. And when you go out, you leave only your eyes exposed. Here, speech fails you. Only it doesn’t. Governor Scott Walker is being recalled, and rightfully so, for thinly veiled attempts at dismantling the state’s unions. Despite the 1,000,000-plus signatures gathered supporting the recall, it’s still a divisive issue among the state’s citizenry. Nationwide other, equally important issues split us, splinter us. Ours is a fractured culture; this week, Rick Santorum stumped in Washington State, even as Governor Chris Gregoire signed into law a bill legalizing gay marriage. We support or protest foreign military operations depending on who is in office. Howard Stern, somehow, is a voice of reason. And this is why I’m telling you that, last Friday, I drank in a backwoods bar with a man named James, my first Wisconsin redneck, a “Walker for Sportsmen” button on his camouflage vest. The sleeve of my sweater was rolled to the elbow, revealing my yin-and-yang koi tattoo, symbolizing what I think, I hope is the interconnectedness of all life, of all of us. The two of us laughed, gently ribbed, rolled dice, drank High Life and brandy old fashioneds sweet. My friends, his friends, did the same, and I marveled at the convergence of our language. Outside the wind lifted the snow, that which hardens, divides and unites us, propelling it inexorably into the night.You Might Also Like: