Toques and Mitts.

It always seems such a surprise these days when I find the time to write or just contemplate the day. Lately my world has taken me in a new direction, and just a few months ago I would have scoffed at the idea of moving "home" and starting a life in the city I couldn't wait to leave ten years ago. But the last six months have brought so many changes into my life that settling into a routine again,  surrounded by familiar faces, has been a real pleasure.

I've come back from an epic journey to the middle of a real Canadian winter - the kind that inspired the stories of our parents, those "back in my day, we had to walk twenty-five miles in minus fifty degree weather just to get to school each day" kind of stories. And no jokes, minus twenty has been a treat this week after a January filled with minus thirty or worse conditions. Coming home to that after walking through a Spanish autumn was truly a shock to the system.

My first weeks back were spent in the automotive shops getting my car ready for the harsh world it was now to drive in. A good friend of mine from the temperate coast of BC thought I was joking when I told her I had to plug in my car all winter. She had no idea what I was talking about since she knows I don't own a Hybrid. Then when I told her how much I spent on winter tires, she just about choked! All in all, my car conversion from Victoria summer to Regina winter has cost me almost $2,500 all told! And that doesn't even include all the gas wasted in warming up said car so my butt doesn't stick to a frozen seat and my breath doesn't fog up the windows! I'm surprised anyone can afford to live here in the winter at all!

But we humans are amazingly adaptable. From the first few weeks of my family laughing at my uncontrollable shivering in minus five degree weather to the seasoned prairie girl who wears her coat open and no toque or scarf in minus twenty, you'd never have guessed I'd been a pampered West Coast winter dweller for the last ten years. I can scrape windows with my bare hands! (To clarify for my Victoria pals, I've invested in a window scraper because no credit card would survive the inch-thick frost we get out here! But I do it without mitts.)

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that what I thought would be the hardest part about coming home, namely the deep freeze, has become one of my keenest pleasures about being back. The razor-sharp hoar frost clinging to the top branches, set against the icy blue sky, sun glittering off the ice crystals in the air, all in a 360 degree wedding-dress-white prairie skyline...well, I guess the beauty of this place is in my blood. I never realized till now how much I'd missed it.