MM asked if we had any snow yet. He lives in California but entered the earth in Iowa so he knows snow. We swapped tales of cars sliding on ice and other seasonably appropriate tips for survival.
As I write this it’s in the single digits outside. We have more than our feet under a quilt. Consider “write while buried in blankets” a winter survival tip.
Our ice-damming issue is not yet resolved but it’s so cold outside that the water is not flowing. The heat of the house is no match for the polar freeze so nothing is melting. Here’s another survival tip: When there’s nothing to be done about the problem then it’s a good idea to do nothing. Get under the quilt and write. If writing is not your thing then just get under the quilt.
We are fans of Life Below Zero. All too often the people in the episodes ride their snowmobiles down frozen rivers or across the icy tundra when the temperatures are minus-fifty-degrees. It never fails, at the same moment we say, “I couldn’t do that.” Which, as it turns out, is another survival tip: know your limits.
We discovered our ice-damming issue in the middle of the night which meant I was climbing a ladder in the cold-dark-night with pitchers of boiling water to open the gutters and downspout and give the water a path that did not include the inside of the house. After a few hours the aluminum ladder was covered with ice (former boiling water that splashed); my gloves – also wet – were sticking to the ladder. Sometimes it is not enough to know your limits; you must act on what you know. Consider this an important survival tip.
If you know your limits and honor the limit you know, then your chances of living another day are greatly increased. Here is perhaps my best survival tip: when you find the limit but are tempted to cross it with delusions of grandeur or inflated feelings of importance, imagine a mug of hot coffee, pumpkin pie and warm quilts – the simplest joys of survival, the epicenter of thriving. When standing at the bottom of a frozen ladder at 2am with yet another pot of boiling water, it will help put things into perspective.
Having some perspective is, perhaps, the most awesome survival tip of all.
read Kerri’s blogpost about SNOW
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The Direction of Intention 