Hibernation is for Bears (and Covid)

For most of my life, I lived up North, in the Finger Lakes district of New York state. The vast majority of people in the world don’t know there is any part of New York that isn’t New York City, but that’s not true. There’s downstate, which is anything south of Albany, including New York City and Long Island. There is Central New York, which includes the Finger Lakes. There’s the Southern Tier, which is around Binghamton, and there’s Western New York, the area around Buffalo. And there is the North Country, bounded by Albany at the south and Canada in the north. Lake Ontario is the northern boundary of the state, and Lake Erie is the western. Those two huge lakes stay relatively warm for most of the winter, so when the cold wind from the Arctic flows over them, it picks up warm moisture, and when that air hits cold land, it dumps the moisture in the form of snow. Lots of snow. When New York City gets 2 feet of snow, it’s an emergency, because there is no place to put it. When upstate New York gets 2 feet of snow, it’s Tuesday.

Some people enjoy winter sports, like skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, ice skating, and sledding. I admire those people, but I do not envy them. I had a theory: no one should travel farther from home than there are degrees in the day, at least when it’s below freezing. And I liked to be able to see the road if I had to drive. Call me silly, but snow-covered roads are slippery and sometimes hard to see. People buy four-wheel drive vehicles thinking then they are invincible, but four-wheel drive is not four-wheel stop, and…