A Southerner in Vermont Winter

One of the greatest things about Vermont is that it is a true four-season state. When you live here, you get to experience the warmth of summer, the coolness of fall and spring, and the absolute frigidness of winter. I’m an outdoor person, so growing up in North Carolina it was nothing to spend a few hours outside in February because snow was rare, and it typically didn’t drop below 40 degrees. It didn’t take long to figure out Vermont is a different story.

The first Sunday in January I woke up before dawn to preach at a church a few hours away. I knew it was cold and that I needed to start the car to let it warm up, but I didn’t think to check and see HOW cold it was. This was dumb decision number one.

Dumb decision number two was that I went outside wearing nothing but a sweatshirt, shorts, and flip-flops. I almost died. It was negative eighteen degrees with a windchill that brought the temperature to almost negative thirty degrees. On top of this, fourteen inches of snow had fallen during the night.

I made it about five steps onto my porch when my exhaustion from being up so early wore off and my brain let my body know it was freezing! I took a second – looked at the door to the house, then looked back at the car, and made dumb decision number three. Instead of going back in the house, bundling up, and reassessing the situation, I thought, “This is no big deal. I got this!” and ran toward the car, flip-flops throwing up and collecting snow with every step. I made it to my car in seventeen steps – I was counting.

Dumb decision number four was that, in my haste, I didn’t take into account that the same snow that had fallen on the ground through the night had accumulated on the car. I opened the door to my car, threw myself in, and dropped about six inches of snow on my head in the process. Dumb decision number five. I started the car (which was a struggle unto itself because parking a car outside in negative temperatures isn’t exactly great for the battery) and turned on the windshield defrosters.

I’m sure you can picture me at this point – a dumb southerner in Vermont, sitting in my car, wearing flip-flops and shorts. In this moment, I was colder than I had ever been in my entire life. And then it hit me – the windshield wasn’t really going to defrost until I brushed the snow off my car. And where was my brush? In the trunk. And what was my trunk covered in? At least a foot of snow. Not knowing what else to do, I made dumb decision number six. I got out of the car, took my sweatshirt off, and proceeded to use my sweatshirt as a brush.

I can proudly say this dumb decision turned out okay – as long as your definition of okay is pretty loose. Using my sweatshirt to knock a foot of snow off my trunk didn’t work quickly and the good Lord knows it didn’t work efficiently, but it worked. I got all the snow off my trunk, used my fingernails to scrape off the ice that was keeping the trunk lat h from releasing (dumb decision number seven), and got my brush out.

It took me ten minutes to brush the rest of the snow off the car. Ten minutes. No gloves, no boots, just me outside in a sweatshirt, shorts, and flop-flops brushing the car off for ten minutes. (I’m sure dumb decisions number eight and nine were mixed in somewhere in there).

When I finished clearing off the car, I high-tailed it back toward the house. Six steps in (I was counting) I lost a flip-flop. Eleven steps in, I lost the other (I was still counting).

When I stepped in the house, my beard and nose hairs were frozen solid. I took off my freezing, soaking wet clothes and made dumb decision number nine of the morning – I jumped straight into the hot shower. My entire body felt like it had caught fire when the water touched my skin. I stood there for at least fifteen minutes, somewhere between shivering, sweating, and crying, before I was able to move again.

Then, I realized, I still had to shovel the driveway.

Ogden Nash’s “Winter Morning” has nothing on mine.

I learned a valuable lesson about my new life that morning – Vermont winters are very different from southern winters. I promised myself I’d never make the mistake of forgetting that again. And I didn’t – until two Sundays later when I woke up before dawn to preach at a church a few hours away again.

Praise the Lord its now April and winter is over!