What's so great about winter

I’ve lived most of my life in a warm place, a place so warm, a place that can get so sweltering hot, that its nickname includes the word “hot.”

Hotlanta.

In Hotlanta, a snow dusting, however slight, sends everyone home from the office. A few flakes turn wide highways into crawling parking lots. Those white winter flecks on southern ground clear out the bread and milk aisles and reduce grocery stores and gas stations to looking like riot scenes. And for the million or so children in the metro area, the mere whisper, the rumor of a rumor of possible snow on the way — it’s the kind of existential threat that prompts southern teachers to shove every child out of the classroom, through the school exit doors and onto a waiting idling yellow bus, after which the doors are slammed, chained and welded shut.

Even though the South was covered in a thin veneer of snow just weeks ago, causing every loaf of bread in the region to be bought and then sold on the black market by transplants from New York and Chicago, winter is a rare thing in that region.

The temperature this past Christmas Day in Hotlanta, my parents proudly announced — as if they had some influence on it — was 70 degrees. By announcing the stark difference in winter temperatures, they were hoping, as usual, to enlighten me to the error of my ways. They were hoping said illumination would spur me to jump in my truck and drive and drive until the rubber of my tires is pounding, once again, sweet southern pavement.

I remember, just after I moved to Havre, talking to the owner of a local meat shop. He said the summers in Montana were great and the winters great for keeping Montana the way Montanans like it: spacious and wild and void of noncommittals who might spill the secret that is the last great place.

It takes dedication to live in Montana.

Every plan is at the mercy of the weather. Every conversation includes the words “degrees” or “Jeez, it’s cold!” Your face freezes and your whiskers turn into icicles during the minute it takes to traverse the grocery store parking lot. And the cars, oh the cars. The clutch stops releasing once it gets below 0, the transmission fluid becomes goo, and ice fuses the doors shut. And after I’ve pried the door open and grinded the transmission out of first, I might do a 180 every now and then when my only intention was to make a left turn. But hey, who doesn’t like a surprise here and there?

We’re at the end of the world here. Amazon takes two extra days to deliver anything. The cable companies consider their service premium simply because it works. There’s no place to buy guitar picks or order Thai food. There’s little hope of making a wrong turn in downtown and experiencing a good old-fashioned, American-style mugging.

But despite the lacks and delays, there’s a certain, maybe even twisted, charm, to living in north-central Montana.

One of my co-workers shruggingly said that one of the advantages of living here is we don’t worry about tornados or hurricanes. “It just gets cold,” he said, and that, he added, is a problem that can easily be fixed by a warm jacket and a hat, two options that would do little to keep one from being sucked through a gap that used to be occupied by a roof and into the eye of a tornado.

And there’s more charm.

As an introvert, Montana winters are a great excuse for not going anywhere. Some people like to make us introverts feel guilty, sometimes, for having so much fun not having any. But when it’s minus 20 outside, and your window looks like a snow globe in constant motion, nobody gives you any crap.

When it’s time to get started on the next great American novel, I’ll do it during the Montana winter, because there’s no better time to barricade myself in and dive into an imaginative world warmer but more twisted than the one outside my speckled window.

In Montana, I feel secluded from a world with insane inclinations. I am immune to traffic jams and hurricanes and riots spurred by inane thought manufacturers.

In Montana, the winter freezes out a lot of nonsense.