Unusual weather events can transform the familiar into the utterly alien. Winter stretches on and we grow accustomed to the same scene greeting us morning after morning from our window. The low light. The drab streets. Our world hardens into a frozen sameness. While this feeling is typical of Februaries, it is a feeling that has been compounded these last two years by the global pandemic, especially if we have been subject to lockdown or have felt anxious about going outdoors.
And then something happens that jolts us from our ossified view of the world. It grabs us by the shoulders and shakes us. That something can be a personal event: a near miss as we’re stepping off the curb, for example. Suddenly our heart races and it reminds us that we are alive after all. Or something that affects us all, like a major weather system that sweeps across the entire continent.
I remember how an ice storm struck the Toronto area in January of 2014. We haven’t had such a storm since then. Entire trees toppled under the sheer weight of the ice. Power lines came down. Nature inflicted on the city a terrible beauty.
On the morning after the storm had blown through, I stepped outside and was struck by how different the world looked. It occurred to me that I might live out the balance of my natural life and never again see the world in quite this way. And so I spent the whole day wandering, taking it all in, as if this might be the last day of my life.
