Tahoe Chill
This is my first real winter in Tahoe. It’s great. Alpine Meadows has had terrific snow, and all the lifts have been open—even Sherwood. I just got cross-country skis and I’ve already been sledding. It’s just that… oh my god, is it cold!
I’m originally from Pennsylvania, and we know cold there. But this—this bone-chilling, marrow-freezing, arctic chill is something that no one in their right mind should live in.
I think maybe the problem is that my drafty little house has no heat—just an upstairs fireplace. When I moved here, in June, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But now, when I get home from work, it’s a little different. It is really hard to start a fire while wearing gloves, even harder without gloves when my fingers are too numb to flick the lighter.
We had a mini-crisis the last big snow. (“A 50-year snow,” the experts said. Made me feel special.) It just so happened that we ran out of the firewood our home’s predecessors had left behind, go figure, just as the snow started to fall. Luckily, I called down to the Pizza Shack in Truckee, which often has big trucks full of lumber sitting outside. The guy, Brian, told me that I could have some, about $40 worth of wood. The rest was saved for little old ladies who, like me, forgot to restock and would freeze otherwise.
The snow was nice. Not so much for my fiancé, who is the official shoveler in our home, but for me, who didn’t leave the couch that entire day and most of the next. It’s alright, though; it’s a comfortable couch. I don’t mind waiting there until spring.