PINE NUTS – That First Shovelful

Tossed my first shovelful of snow today and it felt good. I no longer throw snow in such a way as to torque my back out of joint and cause me to crawl back inside to call my mother, who, rest in peace, has been gone from this earthly realm for three decades. I used to call her when I got chapped lips while still in college, and the very sound of her voice would heal me… 

No, throwing snow, if you do it right, is a wholesome exercise. My secret to success is in purchasing a smaller shovel each winter. I’m down to a child’s shovel these days so shoveling is a joy, though it takes forever to clear my deck, and I suffer from frostbite.

Yet I feel lucky to live at the optimal altitude, 6,400 feet, where we don’t have funerals to attend because everybody’s backs give out from shoveling snow, and they move down into the desert.

I once knew a man who moved from Lake Tahoe to Death Valley and froze to death while wearing a self-made suit of astral armor—a sort of one-man outdoor air conditioner that froze him solid as a rock. They found him incased in ice with a foot-long icicle hanging from his nose. It was reported in the Death Valley Monthly that the few folks who attended his funeral had to wear parkas and Eskimo Mukluks, as the deceased was still solid as a stalagmite.

Spooning while sleeping has been the saving of most everybody who lives above 6,000 feet. I was asked once who discovered spooning and of course I had no idea, so I did a little research, that is to say, asked the guy who was cutting my hair, and he told me it was Bruis and Brendanisa. I asked him, “So who were Bruis & Brendanisa, anyways?”

He lit up a cigarette, took a sip of what he said of apple juice, and commenced to tell me the story of Bruis & Brendanisa…

“They was the first Europeans to settle here at Lake Tahoe, but they neglected to pack their wool pajamas. So rather than stay up all night doing jumping jacks and push-ups, they decided to sleep next to each other, and the rest, as they say, is genealogy, for little Brendanisa came along sometime later, and was the first European baby born here at the Lake of the Sky.”

As a very smart man once observed, it could even have been George Burns, “It’s too bad the people who know the most about how to best run this country are either cutting hair or driving taxi.”

So it is in 2024, that those of us who know how to shovel snow in an expedient manner, fear not the months of winter. No, we bundle up and get outside and revel in that fluffy white stuff. Our motto: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”

Audio: https://open.spotify.com/show/7Fhv4PrH1UuwlhbnTT23zO