The unbearable weight of snowflakes
Imagine it’s -44C. A gale is blasting snow crystals into your face, sharp as metal shavings. Your nostril hairs crackle in your nose, any exposed skin burns and your eyelashes are freezing together. The trail you tramped out with snowshoes yesterday has disappeared under drifts and you’re stumbling thigh deep in snow. This was my journey to the bloody toilet most mornings in January. View from indoors The drifts outside the house are now higher than the windows. Homer is snowed into his doghouse and ice dust blows in under the back door. I won’t be surprised if we wake up one morning under blankets of soft, cold white. The trees and rooves are all sagging under the tremendous icy weight. Stand still for too long and we too are sagging, hoods and hats packed with it. Stuck in deep snow Travelling by snowmachine has been a frost-bitten slog of swimming the skidoos through unbroken white powder, with the wind nipping at our cheeks and the cold c