People who know me know how much I hate complaints about the weather. It’s not like it’s something that you can change so why waste energy griping about it? Even in the craziest conditions, I find it hard to understand why people would rather hide and bitch than to get out and witness the awesomeness of nature and possibly even try to enjoy it all. So needless to say that the most difficult thing for me this winter has been…well, everyone else. It’s been a bit odd compared to the past couple of years but I remember snowstorms even in April while I was a kid so all these panic attacks that people have been having is just plain silly to me. Get off your butts, people and enjoy nature!
Yes, there has been a lot of snow this year. We’ve seen worse and it did kind of suck that we got quite a dump just as the snow was starting to melt but…so what? It’s just snow! It’s not like any of you are going to melt if it touches you! So why not get out and enjoy it? If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll see one good way of getting out and being active in the winter – snowshoeing. On Sunday, I took what will probably be my last snowshoe trek. It was just a stomp through the Forestry Farm but it was nice to get out walking and communing with nature.
I definitely had fun walking around even though I did fail into some deep knee high snow. Well, I say knee high but as I found out when I took one of the snowshoes off to untangle myself, the snow was actually waist deep if you can believe it!
But it’s not just the amount of snow that fell that seemed to upset people. We were also witnesses to some pretty intense winds. I think the highest I saw (on the weather reports) over those couple of days was 63km/h with wind gusts up to 82km/h. Needless to say that those kind of winds tend to blow things around pretty good and that made the snow problem even crazier. But it was awe inspiring to think that there’s that kind of power in nature.
But this IS all nature. You take the good with the bad. There’s nothing you can do about it! But there is one cause for complaint since it is something that the we – or rather, the city – can do but didn’t – snow removal. Every year, we’re told that there’s no money in the budget for snow removal. Really? A Canadian city smack dab in the middle of the prairies doesn’t have money for snow removal?! It’s outrageous! Public health and safety MUST be a priority and ensuring that roads and trails are clean and passable is far more important than recycling bins, red light districts, and whatever other cockamamie garbage has been making civic news headlines lately. Saskatoon has been barely drivable over the past several months and this month in particular has been inexcusable for the state of the roads. The odd occasion that they were cleaned, they were not well done. What’s the point of cleaning roads if you’re not going to get rid of those dangerous ruts? On major roads, entire lanes were missing because no one bothered to actually clean right up to the edge of the road. Seriously? Does no one check to see that the job was actually done? And of course, since they’re barely doing the roads, the trails have been a total mess. I give you the following pictures as exhibit A:
It’s really disgraceful, isn’t it? And yet, people would rather complain about the snow that fell naturally than the people who have make this city a joke and a giant hazard by not trying to remove it. Very sad and scary! I think it’s time that we rethink our relationship with nature because this love/hate thing is counterproductive.