GINTA — We need to put winter back together

Daniela Ginta writes for the Armchair Mayor News on Fridays.

COLUMN — We left home on Friday. The snow, dirty along the seams, was piling up high and stiff by the side of the road on the hill where we live. In the yard it was still white and pretty. And lots of it.

I caught some weather news on the radio on Thursday night and the predicted 14 degrees Celsius sounded indecent. You just cannot move that fast on the thermometer scale. Winter, all that snow… I had witnessed snow evaporation before here in Kamloops, but this was too soon and too sudden.

Upon our return on Monday night the air was balmy and the snow mostly gone. For once the weather wizards got it right, when I was hoping the prediction was a glitch in the system. A sinking feeling came with it.

Having moved recently, we had never seen what our place looks like without snow. Now we do, but it was too sudden. The boys still wake up in the morning and run to the window hoping that winter got back overnight. The question that follows is always the same: ‘Will the snow come back this winter?’… I deliver an embarrassed, ‘I hope so’ every time and struggle with it myself.

They also wonder about future winters. That’s when I shift in my chair and admit to not having an answer. At the same time, I know I will not stop trying to make future winters possible. It’s an uphill battle for most of the time but what choice do I have. We need winters.

I have always been of the opinion – still am – that we have today and now, so we should make the best of it. The cynical can release a collective chuckle over the apparent dichotomy between my ‘make the best of today’ on one hand, and the future-related woes on the other.

There is no dichotomy. Making the best of today should not be painted in selfish hues. It’s meant to be an invitation to live with mindfulness and the conscience that we are but part of the world rather than its masters. It’s meant to allow for future to build itself on the many todays during which we make choices. These choices matter beyond their apparent nature and if we care to listen, the tick-tock of time is loud enough for all to hear.

Every now and then I get sent articles persuading readers that it is but a bunch of anxious scientists who create and maintain the hoax that the world and its climate are changing.

I can ignore both the stream of environmental news I peruse every morning and I can ignore the well-wishers’ occasional friendly swats on the back telling me I should stop fretting and enjoy having the cake and eating it too (for the record, there are very few cakes I actually like.) What I cannot ignore is looking out the window and wondering about what’s to come when a casual winter morning becomes all balmy and inappropriate.

On my walk down the hill yesterday I passed by bags of dog poo that some left in the deep snow while it was there, I passed by cans and bottles thrown on the side of the road, food wrappers, and yes, I did a continuous graceful slalom to avoid stepping in the now softened-by-snow dog poo mounds that lie exposed to the world. All of it exposed to the world by the sudden snow evaporation.

The similarity to the bigger picture was striking. The disappearing snow reveals the small sins of missing social conscience and, as it stands right now in the context of weather patterns induced by climate change, it also reveals the big sins that are much harder to clean up than the occasional dog poo pile.

You see, children have always had slight anxieties about the future, mostly about the immediate future. It’s part of being human. But this is more than a worry. Conversations between my boys include thoughts on global warming as winter hats are left behind for yet another afternoon of playing outside.

They both love snow. They love tumbling and skiing. Yet in the light of a few hills closing for the season due to lack of snow a question surfaces… ‘Will there be any snow when we grow up?’

It’s as real as can be. Our planet is affected by our actions, whether we admit to it or not. Not only that, we have come unraveled from nature’s intricate and beautifully functioning patterns in so many ways, it is hard to connect with it again, mostly because that would involve what we perceive as a sacrifice. Much of our way of life relies on destruction, rather than sustainability and while the latter is a possibility, it will not become one until we make it one.

We need to be willing to know and stand for the greater good – literally, in case of our planet – if we are to bring winters back.

It is not just about the snow, or yet another disappearing species, but about lacking or ignoring the knowledge to integrate it all into what life means (see the recent case of the disappearing caribou and the unfortunate scapegoat, the wolves) and realizing that we are not owning the planet, but taking turns and when the next ones get theirs, they should have it as good as we did, or better.

Children should not need to worry about bringing back winter. I applaud creativity in children, but when my sons burst into the kitchen two days ago saying, ‘We brought back winter!’ because they managed to gather all the snow in the back yard and make an albeit small sled run for that ‘one more sledding time’ I could not escape the thought that we are, collectively, too far from where we should be. That sinking feeling again.

It is high time we find our way back and choose a path that takes us through every season, one a time, no overlapping or skipping. One step at a time, each of us, small steps. A will creates a way, it always has.

Thoughts?

Daniela Ginta is a mother, scientist, writer and blogger. She can be reached at daniela.ginta@gmail.com, or through her blog at http://www.thinkofclouds.com.