When we first moved to Utah in September, 2004, we anticipated winter with a positive attitude and we were fascinated by the snow. My wife, a life long Floridian, had never seen snow before. I had at least had a few winters in upstate New York back in my college days. So, as new Utahns, we wandered out into the snowfall in awe. I’m sure the neighbors stared out their double-paned windows thinking, “There go those weird Florida people.”

All that has changed. We are facing our ninth Utah winter with the kind of anticipation one brings to the dentist’s office. Because we own no power equipment, we are dependent upon the kindness of those who do to render our very long driveway passable once it fills up with snow. Last winter it was a friend with a plow attached to the front of his truck; I hope he treats us kindly again this winter.

I know that I will be sorely tested to maintain my morning jogging regimen once the snow and below-freezing temperatures arrive. Then I worry about my wife who has twice slipped and fallen on icy surfaces. Two years ago she crashed into the wooden panel fence and dislodged it from its post. Four years ago, she went down in the driveway and broke her wrist, the most painful experience of her life.

So I look out my window as I write this, the sun coming up over the bench and beginning the climb into the low seventies, the junipers and pinions overseeing the sage brush, and it is as if I am watching a child leave home. Soon this halcyon Indian Summer will be gone, replaced by huge clumps of white snow sagging the juniper limbs, freezing winds, and mornings shoveling paths through the accumulating drifts of snow.
I wonder if that place where Greatmartin lives has any available apartments…