Winter is here. The air is gelid, the wind is brumal. I have a good coat, hat, gloves, scarf and boots which protect me from the worst of the weather as I commute to work via public transportation, which requires a great deal of walking and waiting in single digit and subzero temperatures and a couple of days with wind chill thrown in just for kicks. Protected from the elements or not, I don't much care for winter, even the mild ones Colorado typically has. After a fairly mild, if wetter than usual December, January turned cold, warmed a little toward the end, and then February came in determined to show January a thing or too. In my memory, February is generally colder anyway, March and April wetter. I know the routine. But I still don't like it.
I don't mind reading about it, however. Last year, when it was supposed to be springtime, we had one snow after another. They weren't horrendous snows. Just one after another, and springtime didn't seem interested in making an appearance. And I was probably more acutely aware of it because I had picked up Laura Ingalls Wilder's 1940 novel The Long Winter. Wilder herself admitted the novels based upon her childhood were historical fiction, and in the interest of storytelling, she combined characters and moved events around. The Long Winter, however, is considered by historians and biographers to be less fiction than her other books, with only a couple exceptions, one of which being the duration and frequency of the storms described in the book.
Laura is 14 in the fall of 1880 and winter arrives early to the town of De Smet, Dakota Territory. There were a higher than usual number of blizzards that season and winter lasted through April 1881. Wilder describes the events of that winter through the eyes of a fourteen year old and the relentless winter becomes as much a character in the tale as she herself, her family and the townspeople. Some storms lasted for days, snow went up to rooflines, cattle froze to death standing in the field. Fuel and food became scarce when trains couldn't get in to town. Laura and friends get lost in a blinding blizzard and would have walked out of Main Street unto the open prairie and perished had Laura not bumped into the last building. Pa and other men from town travel a great distance in an unsuccessful attempt to dig out a train, and the railroad eventual shuts down all trains. Later, when already meager food supplies have run so scarce many of the townspeople would probably starve, Almonzo Wilder, whom Laura would grow up to marry, and his friend Cap Garland set out inbetween blizzards in search of a store of wheat rumored to be an arduous twenty mile journey across a landscape blanketed with snow obscuring familiar landmarks and hiding deep holes and other dangers.
Snow, cold, dark, hunger, worry -- but the survival story is more than the family's will to survive; it is the family's will to do so in a happy, cheerful manner; encouraging and lifting up one another, telling stories, making a meager Christmas the best it could be. The "Long Winter", or the "Snow Winter" as it is called in some historical accounts, did happen, and whatever liberties Wilder may have taken with its duration and intensity (and the local and oral history doesn't agree, so perhaps Wilder's memories are the truer account after all) -- the story itself is a satisfying yarn, best read from inside a comfortable abode with modern amenities, and perhaps large mugs of hot cocoa, with gratitude for global warming.
John Christopher wrote a very different novel in 1962, entitled The Long Winter (US title; The World In Winter in the UK). Christopher's novel is part post-apocalyptic, part political satire. Set in an unspecified future, a natural event in the decline of solar radiation brings a new ice age to earth. The winter grows harsher, food becomes scarce, economies go south. And people migrate south to more temperate climates, specifically Nigeria. And here the long winter takes second place to real story: society's mores being turned on their heads. As Europeans flee south into Africa, Black becomes the dominate, majority race, and White becomes the oppressed, the minority. I think the tale works better in world of 1962 in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, but there is still much food for thought for today. Our attitudes towards others, whether based upon race, religion, economics or whatnot - could change in an instant, given a different set of circumstances.
Christopher, perhaps better known for his children's book series The Tripods, wrote disaster novels for all ages. Although most of his adult novels are now dated, I think it would be nice to see them back in print, for with that dating comes historical significance. I read the Tripods (set centuries after Earth's inhabitants have been enslaved by alien entities) books 35 years ago, along with Empty World (a plague causes rapid aging and death and nearly decimates the Earth's population) and then about ten years ago, No Blade of Grass (a plant disease kills off wheat, corn and other edible grass-like grains). Although The Long Winter was written for adults, when I read it five years ago at the height of widespread discussions about global warming, it brought back my childhood: I grew up in an era where the scare wasn't rapidly rising temperatures and melting polar ice caps, but rather the fact that we were long overdue for the next ice age. It was in this context I read John Christopher's The Long Winter; the political commentary didn't really register until I was nearly finished reading. Overall, though, Christopher spins a good yarn. His characters are flawed individuals, and to this reader, not particularly likeable in some of the decisions they make. The ugly side of humanity comes out quickly when disaster strikes, and it comes out in a matter-of-fact way, as if circumstances dictate morals more than inherent beliefs. Still, his primary characters are basically good, eventually choosing the right over the self serving. And although, like all good disaster tales, the senses of gloom and despair prevail through much of the book, in the end, a glimmer of hope is present; not a neatly tied happy ending, but a hope, just as springtime is hope for new life after long winters.
