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When my editor called me Monday to tell me not to go into work that morning, a quick glance outside my window told me why.
You know it’s a bit snowy when the giant suspension bridge that normally greets your gaze in the morning is only half there.
So that left a day of working from home (or trying to) with a cup of cocoa in hand.
Unfortunately, working from home when you’re a reporter means eventually having to trudge out to get storm pics for the next paper.
So, happy in the knowledge my colleagues in Newcastle were also braving the storm, it was to this great task I turned when 11 a.m. rolled around, with the storm about as apocalyptic as it was at daybreak.
I donned my toque, thick coat, snow boots and flannel scarf, took a deep breath and plunged into the maelstrom, head high and hooded, ready to face the weather gods’ wrath as I trudged through my unplowed side street.
I came back five minutes later. It was just too damned windy and snowy. Most I managed was a shot of the bridge, still half-swallowed by the white stuff.
Even then, the blowing snow coated my lenses and drove me back up my street to my warm apartment, there to nurse my pride and wait for it to die down a bit.
It did, and so at 4 p.m., I tried again, pushing my way through the drifts in front of my apartment building (the knee-deep footprints left by my previous attempt had been filled in by the blowing snow). I struck out for downtown Chatham.
What a sight greeted me.
The city streets were deserted.
Everywhere was white. Were it not for the occasional cautious car, out for some inexplicable reason, I’d have felt like the only person in the world, sole survivor of some nuclear winter. The main streets were plowed, but still it was eerie.
Choo Choo’s? Buried. That little caboose they have over there was just submerged. Poor O’Donaghue’s’ front door was besieged by a hefty snowdrift, like most of the other stores on old Water Street.
Still, signs of life! A line-up of cars stretched behind one truck, being pushed back and forth by friends and other drivers as they struggled to free it from a snowdrift. The snow in the road was a churned mess.
After taking the obligatory photos (that was the point of my sub-Arctic odyssey, after all), I shouldered the camera and pitched in for a bit, before losing my grip and banging my wrist on the rear bumper. I was almost grateful for the excuse to not have to push anymore.
In a lull between pushing, when one gentleman was having at the road by the truck with a shovel, we all clustered around and commiserated about how the afternoon lull was just that: A lull before a renewed onslaught, according to the all-knowing weatherman.
What better time to talk about the weather than when you’re being brutally savaged by it? I moved on, noting the dark storefronts along the street. The wind had died down a bit by then, but the snow was still falling, and it wasn’t chilly at all. It was actually pleasant, especially since I didn’t have to worry about driving, and would only face the ordeal of digging out early next morning.
One of my assignments was to get close to the river and snag some pics of the storm surge that was expected. Bit tough with all the snow of the season piled up high along the streets running by Waterford Green.
Eventually, I found a patch at the foot of the impromptu mountain range that got me relatively close to Station Wharf, shouldered my camera yet again and scaled the four-metre tall heap.
Once aloft, I tumbled down the other side, and put my foot down into fresh snow, unplowed for the whole season.
I sank in up to my waist. And attempts to get back on the mountain met only with more sinkage, before finally my boots got some purchase and I could clamber my way back to the peak, my quest for the river’s edge a failure.
This time, though, I stopped thinking about where I was going, stopped at the top, lifted my head and looked around.
The bridge was an indistinct line in the distance, a backdrop for a snowcovered boat. I knew the one, and knew it was on a trailer on the wharf. But that day, the land and the river seemed merged, and it seemed adrift in a single white sea.
Never seen anything like it, so I sat there and savoured the moment for a bit. Then I clambered back down to the street, ‘cos I was cold and there’s only so much you can take of a blizzard before you decide to go warm up.
Besides, I figured all the snow building up in the nooks of my camera wasn’t too good for it.
