This is just getting ridiculous. I was leaving the Lawn on Tuesday night and looking around at the bizarre brilliance of the night as light exploded upwards from the unbroken ice. I was meditating on the great beauty of the wild night and the pleasure of solitary travel through the rage of the elements.
Then I came past the Rotunda, hit a sheet of ice and slid for 50 feet.
My meditations rapidly shifted gear from naturalist rapture to shock. As I slogged up Rugby -- I had never even realized that that street was sloped until this dreadfulness -- I went through a series of additional gears, including things like "outraged," "personally offended" and "hideously depressed." I had time to do all this because it took me more than 30 minutes to complete a walk that usually lasts less than 15 minutes.
Weather is important. The eight people who read my column sometimes accuse me of talking about the weather too much. I disagree; after all, our lives are in many ways framed, channeled and directed by the state of the sky and the strength of the wind.
Weather like that which we experienced at the end of the fall semester makes life rich with potential. I climbed Humpback Rock with three of my dearest friends Jan. 16, watched the wind roar down the valley and had a picnic -- it was 70 degrees. This was great, and one of my favorite single moments here, and it couldn't have happened on a less magnificent day.
Weather like that which we've been having lately has the opposite effect, and to an enormously larger degree. I hail from a particularly unappetizing stretch of frozen tundra in the North, and even there 10 hours of freezing rain and chunks of ice falling out of the sky is considered unnecessary.
Here, though, in this bizarre and irresistible place called the South, where school districts close for predicted flurries and snowplows look more like filigreed Christmas-tree ornaments than the burly, snorting mechanisms of my homeland, what we've seen has been like the Apocalypse.
I find it immensely hysterical to see Floridians and Texans (superb people, in general) awkwardly picking their way down frozen-over pathways and scrabbling desperately to remain upright. Where I grew up, you take in knowledge of how to drive (don't touch the breaks while fishtailing) and walk (keep the balls of your feet pressed down) in the snow. As I've learned, there are many who lack this benefit.
Watching the systems of the world shut down around us, even if only for a brief spell, is always bothersome. It's strange not to be able to walk freely where and when you want. It's even stranger, in our automotive culture, to know that the use of your car will bring certain death.
It's strangest, I think, to feel so isolated. It's increasingly the case, I hear, for adult Americans to feel cut off from society; people have many fewer people to talk with, rely on and trust than they used to.
We preserve an older sense of community at the University that forces us to form the kinds of trusting relationships that we really need. And the best part is that we can reach each other at the drop of a hat. No one really lives more than a 20-minute walk away from anyone else, and we can always meet for midday coffee or late-night sandwiches or trips to Teeter or random, sprawling, unpredictable conversations whenever we want. That's the best thing, the most seductive thing -- the thing I'll miss the most.
So as I sit and write this, my friends, I know that I cannot bound exuberantly out into the world, as I can most of the time, to tackle the night by the throat and throw it to the ground. I don't like knowing this, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. I have faith that the world will right itself one of these soon-coming days, and we'll once again be sashaying out into the brilliant world without scarves or gloves or fear of frostbite, and that'll be good.
While you're waiting, I suggest "Lost." It's back, and thank God for that.
Conor's column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. He can be reached at sullivan@cavalierdaily.com
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