Moving Snow

Bryon with “Big Momma”

The banks of snow along the driveway and walkway keep growing and growing.  Finally, they reach a point where they are now towering above my head, and I can no longer hoist the snow onto them.  I stand there surveying the situation.  Finally, I settle on carting the snow across the street where the banks are only a mere three feet high.  The whole thing seemed so pointless and almost caveman-like.  I scoop a mound of snow, carefully balance it on my shovel and walk across the street throwing it down.  My shoulders ache from the exercise, and yet it is one I was all too familiar with.  After spending almost two hours clearing the walkway and removing the berm from the driveway, I set off to work.

After working at the ski resort all day, during which it snows copious amounts, large potato-chip size flakes endlessly falling from the sky, I struggle out to the parking lot to find my car.  Row after row of white, fluffy lumps meet my eye.  Which one is my car?  I had to wade through the snow, and brush off the back to find the license plate, hoping my memory hasn’t failed me.  Finally, finding my car, I unearth it much like a sculptor chipping away the marble to find the statue.  First, sweeping the snow brush back and forth along the roof, then along the hood, finally working my way to the back.  Voila!  Finally, a car appears.  I start the car, and ever so slowly make my way back home, the car slipping as I tap the brakes heading down the hill.  As I near my house, there it is — the dreaded berm!  The city snowplows have come through, and the berm has reappeared and looks to be easily four feet.  My roommate is standing in the driveway, looking at it too.

I can’t take it.  I can’t take one more moment of struggling to move snow.  I’ve had it.  I’m done.  I roll down the window, peering at my roommate, Ed, through the dark, my breath forming icy plumes as I speak.  “I’m outta here!”

“Where are you going?” he says inquisitively.

“I’m done, I can’t deal with this snow or berm or anything tonight and I’m leaving.”

With that, I depress the gas pedal and I leave.  I don’t even know where I’m going.  But what I do know is I am not willing to move one more ounce of snow that day, because I’ve had enough.

Such is life in the mountains, when the storm door is open.  Moving snow can be a daily exercise, and even when the storms aren’t rolling in so often, it’s a regular exercise.  It’s even more exhausting and tiresome when you don’t have a snowblower or a plow, which was the case that winter in Lake Tahoe during the last major El Nino event.  It seemed that February that it snowed two feet or so every other day, and moving snow was all I did for weeks on end.  One positive came from all of this, it was the ultimate upper body workout, with my arms and shoulders becoming sculpted and sinewy as the winter wore on.  No need for a gym membership.

After that winter, I vowed two things.  One, I would buy a 4-wheel drive car, and two, I would find another way to move snow other than using my arms, shoulders and a shovel.  When we moved to our home in Nederland, I immediately started scouring the Craigslist ads for used snowblowers.  No way, was I going through that again.  My husband, having not spent winters in the mountains of the west, cheerfully tried to talk me out of it.  “We can shovel, it won’t be so bad!”  Ha, says the one who has never lived through a winter out here.

I was successful in my mission — we found a used snowblower from a guy in Fort Collins.  It’s an old Sears Craftsman, that’s probably at least 20 years old or more, equipped with chains on its tires, and it’s HUGE.  I refer to it as the “Beast” or “Big Momma”.  But over the last six years, Big Momma has served us well, clearing snow after two and three foot dumps with ease.

Big Momma hasn’t entirely eliminated our need for snow shovels.  We still clear our porch and deck the old fashioned way, one scoop at a time.  But Big Momma sure has made life a lot less frustrating during winter in the mountains, even if my arms are a bit more scrawny, it’s worth the trade.