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The First "Real" Montana Winter in a While

I experienced a disturbing moment during the recent cold spell.

While outside shoveling the sidewalk a few days ago in -27 degree weather, I realized that I was quite comfortable. I wasn’t too cold or too hot. My hands weren’t aching. My face wasn’t even covered.

Perhaps I’ve lived here too long.

Of course I was shoveling out of the wind, which a couple of days earlier had cooled things to a relatively chilly -72, but it was straight up -27 nonetheless.

Winter seldom loses focus up here, and although this one just started, it was set up by a frigid fall. There’s been snow on the ground now for nearly two months.

“You gotta be tough to live here,” longtime residents are quick to say, shortly before packing up to spend the winter in Arizona where they delight in sending pictures of themselves posing by the pool to the poor saps back home.

Those of us who stay say things like “I love feeding cows in the snow,” or “Ice fishing is my favorite sport.”

In all honesty, however, many folks up here can’t afford to leave. Work slows in the winter. Kids have to go to school.

Others can’t abide the swarms of humanity in the warmer climes. There is certainly some truth to the old adage that cold weather culls the riff-raff. We like to think so anyway.

This is the first “real” Montana winter in quite a while. It might come as a bit of a surprise to all of the newcomers that arrived in recent years seeking something different from where they came.

It no longer looks much like the television series “Yellowstone” or any of its spinoffs now, does it?

Maybe it’s all the years of drought we’ve suffered through. Maybe I’m just getting old, but -27 has become old hat, like fishing through the ice, and enjoying a good ground blizzard.

It’s taken awhile, but I’ve gotten used to it. I’d hate to flee here and lose my edge in tepid Arizona.

A fun fact about early winters in Montana is that they usually turn into long ones. The last time we had snow this early it didn’t melt until mid-April.

Enjoy!

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]

 

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