Saying good
morning to a pleasant foggy, drizzling morn, woke up to 50`, but I just read
about an arctic blast dropping down into the States bringing -40` to Bismark.
May the Lord give us enough to endure what every load we have to carry.
Speaking of
-40` I remember hitchhiking from Portsmouth, NH to Rochester, NY one spring and
one of those arctic blasts dropped down for a visit bring -40` with it as me
and a fellow Marine were on the road with a 72 hour pass in our pockets. It got
so cold that the beer in out get-away-bag was freezing. So what could we do but
hurry up and drink them before they froze so hard we could not. There we were
on the side of the Turnpike, thumb out, and drinking slush ice beer in one of
the worst blizzards hit that part of the world in years so early in spring.
The trees
had already sent their sap up into their trunks and limbs, and as the cold set
in it froze them, and with the freezing the sap expanded causing them to
explode. When the smaller limbs started going off on either side of the highway
it sounded just like a firefight on either side of us, and as the night went on
and the bigger limbs started they sounded like mortars and Claymores going off.
Then in the early morning the sap in the trunk has expanded enough to blow the
whole tree down with a boom that sounded like a 155 artillery piece, The trees
booming and crashing down and the limbs' cracking and popping it sounded like a
Marine Division MLR (Main Line of Resistance) throwing everything it had at an
assulat. The only thing missing was the light of a good firefight.
For it was
pitch dark with the only lights coming from the occasional car or truck passing
by. The snow was falling at over an inch and hour, and the wind was a whipping
adding its howling to the chaos of the frozen trees exploding and dying. We
should have frozen to death that Friday night, but the Good Lord did not see
fit to take us that night, instead a car picked up and got right up behind a
semi and follower inches from its back right on into Rochester.
That was a
hard year for Maple Trees, over half of them died during that storm in that
part of the world. I heard over the radio that it had dropped to 40 below during
that night. T
