Last week, deciduous leaves created colored circles around the bases of their grey and white trunks. The thin spruce trees appear tall and stately because their neighbors now stand bare. Today a light snow fell, but did not stick. These silent details, and the crisp, tinny smell in the air, are my hint that winter is on her way. It’s time for me to pack away my summer bike and pull out the long blue extension cord.
An outdoor extension cord?
I don’t own an electric car: the plug dangling from under my front bumper leads to the oil pan heater. To ensure my truck starts on winter mornings, I plug it in a few hours before it’s time to head to work. One -20ºF (-28.8ºC) weekend last winter I stayed indoors and when I tried to start my vehicle on Sunday evening, a tortured moan escaped from the truck. It was not about to do more than that. After I had plugged in for a couple of hours, the truck started, roughly grumbling, but still it started and took me cautiously where I needed to go.
I doubt I’ll need the blue extension cord for another month, but nevertheless I hang it by the front door — inside so that it is pliable when I need it — and check that the switch to the outdoor socket is turned on.
Tomorrow the snow, if it falls — and sticks — the dirt driveway poking out from under the snow will look like powdered sugar at the bottom of a bag of crumbles left from Mexican wedding cakes. If it’s been an agitating workday, a vision of a bag once containing rum balls rolled in white will be more apt.
Tomorrow if snow does stick — and it likely will (as a forecasted high chance of freezing suggests) — I’ll move the much shorter, stay-in-the-truck, blue cord to the floor of the front seat, and it will be within easy reach when I need to plug in to a bollard marking my parking spot at work.
I wonder…
How much snow will tomorrow hold…?