When I first moved to upstate New York and wrote about the impressive winters here, it seemed exotic, it was new to me and people around the country were surprised by the very low temperatures and the howling blizzards that came roaring down from Canada, I got to dramatize the experience in several books – “Dogs Of Bedlam Farm,” and “Dog Days.” People in California and Florida and Texas could hardly imagine such weather and found it quite exotic, my border collie Rose became famous for her heroic efforts during lambing and some awful storms, I wrote about that in “Rose In A Storm,” a novel about a border collie left alone on a farm.
I remember my first encounter with -30 temperatures, how matter changed, I got frostbite, I had to wrap rubber hoses around my neck and crawl across sheets of ice on my hands and knees to get to the water tanks by the barn. I learned a lot about handling extreme weather, it is different now.
But so is the weather experience of almost everyone around me. I see that our experience of weather has changed in those relatively short years, everyone everywhere has experienced extreme and challenging weather, quite often much more intense than mine. Maria and I often joke that our region is now considered moderate, the hurricanes and big storms and tornadoes and heavy snowfalls go elsewhere, most often South of us to Boston or Philadelphia or New York City. Realtors here say people along the East coast have begun looking for homes here, there has been no serious damage from storms.
People in Minnesota and Iowa saw wind chills of – 50 and – 60 last night, worse to come in the next few days. I get messages every day from people who have experienced tornadoes, drought, devastating rains and floods, and of course, the new superstorms, no longer a rarity but a common experience. More than 70 million Americans are experiencing the cold and snow from the storm the Weather Channel has named “Hercules,” and it is hardly the biggest storm of recent months.
Our new shared experience has become surreal. Many of the people who are running much of the country deny climate change, refuse to fund research and warning projects about storms, believe all-weather events are simply the work of God and that claims of environmental catastrophe would hurt profit margins and job growth. They might be right about one thing, in the Kabbalah God warns his people to take care of Mother Earth or he will send awful storms and floods and storms to punish them.
Rose’s exploits seemed heroic to me at the time, but not so unusual now – border collies in South Dakota risked their lives to try to save millions of cattle who perished in the awful superstorms of October, far worse than anything Rose and I ever saw at Bedlam Farm.
The new story for me is the shared and sometimes beautiful but disturbing experience of invasive and increasingly powerful weather. We are all learning to pay attention to the weather, and even in our narcissistic culture, we are seeing that our individual experience is a shared experience, perhaps that is a silver lining amidst all of the suffering and dislocation of our weather. I asked people on my Facebook page this morning to list the temperatures in their communities last night, my -18 degrees was not impressive.
Some people shrug at this weather, no big deal, they are either comfortable in denial or happy to avoid the growing hysteria and alarm about weather. I am allergic to drama these days, but I am not ho-hum about the weather. Our shared experience is a powerful one – my animals are suffering in this kind of cold, and so are we – and I am going to write more about the weather. I am also listening to God, too, along with the Washington politicians who believe science is just a hoax. God isn’t tell me that there is no such thing as climate change, he is telling me and my cold and aching fingers that his Mother Earth is weeping and crying out to us, and Hercules is another angel come to speak to me, and all of us, and that is a message I am hearing.