storm

word problem: if a northbound subaru leaves bensonhurst, brooklyn at 12:30pm driving 20 mph and an eastbound snowstorm leaves pennsylvania at 8am at an undetermined speed, where will the inhabitants of the subaru spend the night?

a. snuggled up by the fire with the small dogs in their very own home in arkville.
b. eating burger king food that was accidentally doused with an entire coke in a motel six just off the highway in new paltz, ny.
c. sitting backward along the side of the snowy road with a few dozen other folks who don't understand that antilock brakes don't make a person impervious to ice.

the answer is b.

we headed up to be sure the pipes weren't frozen (they weren't) and to pick up a christmas gift for someone we'd had shipped to our p.o. box. the nearly five hours it took us to get 88 miles, max cried even more loudly than usual. the only thing he hates more than a car speeding down the highway is a car inching down the highway. you can imagine what his piercing wail added to the icy roads, blinding snow and drivers who seemed unaware of the limits of their precious vehicles. the further north we got, the more we saw folks off in the ditches, stranded on medians, spun around. we never saw it happen once, but the conditions of the cars and of the occupants inside suggested that the slowness of the traffic and deepness of the snow around the highways made for a very bumper car like experience, a soft, slow spinning so that the car would come to rest with a slight tap against snow. we saw nobody slammed into trees or guardrails. just nestled into the piles of snow their cars plowed up as they ran off.

we stopped when it got dark, which on the next to shortest day of the year is some time after four and some time before five. turns out new paltz is hosting some sort of college graduation and there's not much room at the inn. the sweetie managed to snag the last nonsmoking room in the place. for those of you who don't know, nonsmoking in a chain hotel means nobody has smoked there this week except mabye the staff. in addition to nonsmoking, the room turned out to be nondog. fortunately, other patrons, stranded folks like ourselves or the happy parents of graduating college students, found our two small beasts charming.

we hit the road again early saturday morning, expecting it to be clear. expecting often brings disappointment. the 40 mile trip from the highway to the house is a scenic "highway" of two lanes that skirts the northern edge of the ashokan reservoir and then meanders through a valley carved by the esopus creek and then, near big indian, the highway follows birch creek northish through places like giggle hollow and cathedral glen. it climbs up over a mountain and then catches the trail of emory brook and bush kill. you only have to follow it as far as where dry brook, binnekill and the east branch delaware all snarl around together and carve out a little spot for the tiny towns of arkville and margaretville. and this is all a very pretty trip when the roads are clear, but on saturday morning after a friday afternoon snow hurricane, the roads look just like the surrounding countryside. silent. lovely. impassible. we did stop briefly at the beginning of this leg of the trip to get gas and fluid for the wipers. in the just before light part of the morning two guys in a truck pulled up next to us. they had hunter-type stickers affixed to the vehicle and when the driver, a man in his late fifties, got out, some sort of vampire keyboard opera seeped out behind him. i could see the other guy inside, poring over images on his laptop, rocking out to this stuff. the driver began to pump gas but opened the door again to talk to laptop guy. this time we were hit with strains of innagaddadavida. but live and not by iron butterfly. this, i think, is how deerslayers get themselves ready for the contest, at least up here. we get our gas and head back to the road.

we are encouraged by the snow plow we see in front of us and we trudge on. turns out we saw maybe fifty or so snow plows on 28 during our 40 miles, but only in the last ten or so of those miles did we see any of them plowing. the others tooled along cheerfully enough. some seemed to be spilling cinders or sand or salt, whatever folks use up here. but the plows seemed purely ornamental. this had us worried. we have a fairly long driveway with a bit of an uphill slope and everyone was imagining different versions of us getting stuck at the foot of the driveway, the hatchback end of the car jutting out into traffic, visible but unavoidable in this sort of weather. but as we neared the house we could see the driveway was the clearest part of our trip. sometime before our own arrival at 7am, someone had plowed it for us. and we drove right up to the garage uneventfully.

our time here yesterday and today has consisted mostly of lying around, reading, knitting, drinking hot chocolate and being snuggled by dogs. so you can only begin to imagine our horror when we woke up this morning to even more snow. that's right. trapped. not trapped in the house. every vehicle larger than ours has a plow on the front of it and town is accessible. town being the mile of highway 28 that holds two pizza places, an antiques place, a grocery store, three liquor stores, two laundromats and a fitness center. so we've got all that. but we're cut off from the larger world. blowing snow. drifting snow. travel advisories.

what to do? we'll try leaving monday. but today i am making myself a new hat with ear flaps. the sweetie is reading and napping with max. guthrie spends much of his time on the hearth, right in front of the fire, gently licking the logs waiting to go in. we will have hot chocolate in many forms. sometimes there will be cinnamon. sometimes there will be peeps floating on top. maybe there will even be a little bourbon in the chocolate. there are hot foods of all sorts in the pantry. soups. chili. oatmeal. twenty opportunities for tea. coffee in decaf and not. we stopped by to see the parrot in the auto parts store and didn't even mind that they didn't have our windshield wipers. i have sent off lesson plans for my classes tomorrow. nobody will use them, but as long as i send them, nobody will yell at me, either. we will listen to johnny cash. the sweetie will work on some top secret project that involves tools i never use. the snow will snow some more tomorrow but it will be clear in brookln and we will head back to where snow is gray and brown and has sharp things in it. i will wear my new hat. the roads will be clear. but for now we are in the middle of a snowstorm and there are few things more satisfying than being warm and dry and near to good food and company when the weather outside is warning-worthy.