What a difference a week makes

What a difference a week makes. A week ago Sunday, the sun shone brightly and the mercury moved above 0 making us all believe that winter was approaching its conclusion. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, it remained warm and instead of receiving snow we received rain.
On Monday, I walked to work early in the morning and literally skated across the intersections. By mid afternoon, the pebble in most parking lots would have made for excellent curling conditions for the Northern Ontario Men’s Bonspiel.
By Wednesday, the sidewalks had become a giant soup bowl filled with water, slush and snow. The days had remained warm enough that the ice melted from the roads and town crews were busy day and night trying to find the storm sewer drains to remove the lakes of water on the streets.
But then it turned cool. Marnie and I try to get out for an evening walk most evenings and on weekends, but we were discouraged because of the rain. When we began again, we learned that slush and water along the sidewalks had all frozen. The sidewalks were filled with frozen ridges. Hollowed out foot prints, crisscrossed each other. We picked our way along picking out high spots or areas that had frozen even. Walking had become a balancing act as we picked our way along the sidewalks.
We had a great workout.
The best walking in Fort Frances is along the river front. The red brick walkway was clear of snow and ice. Getting to the walkway is the difficult walking.
Our Sunday walk along the river had both of us ready to open our winter jackets as the sun beat down on us. The thermometer read minus 7 or 8, but we could both feel the heat of the sun penetrating through our jackets.
I awoke Monday morning, and actually greeted the snow with a smile. As I write this column a walker has just passed by. The frozen ruts have filled in and she was not slowed.
The snow has again hidden the black snow and softened the edges around the house. The evergreens in the neighborhood have their branches holding on to the soft snow. Snow clings to the top side of branches the other trees. Rough bark has grabbed on to the snow painting many lower trunks white.
The snow flakes are not big. But they are welcomed.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher