Today we got our first big snow fall, two or three inches of wet stuff, good snow man making material. That was my intention after I shoveled the driveway. But alas, I was too spent after shoveling to build a snow man.
The secret is, as a snow man builder, to build first, work later. That is how I did it when I lived with Wally and Auntie Kay. And I was a successful snow man builder! Some of those snowballs were so big they became a snow fort instead of the destined snow man.  When I became bored with rolling snow balls, I would go down to Park Rill and break the newly forming ice found at the water’s edge. I guess that is the difference between a man and a boy, energy level.

Sometimes, when the weather was a lot colder and the ice began forming over Park Rill, as Wally would go down to feed the chickens in the early morning, he would see a blue heron caught in the ice. Freeing the heron was a tricky thing because the flapping wings could damage you as you attempted to do the right thing. Wally would go to the tree prop pile and get a long slim prop to break the ice around the bird’s legs. As long as the frightened bird didn’t knock the prop out of his hand, the freeing process took but a few minutes. The bird would lift off and be gone then Wally could get back to feeding the chickens.

There were winters when the ice was thick enough to would walk on. We would cut holes in the ice and watch the carp swimming below. The carp would come to the holes and gawk at us as we gawked at them.

Skating was something else we did as well. I wasn’t much for hockey though, too unco-ordinated. I seem to remember a group of boys meeting on Mud Lake for hockey on the week ends. We would sit on a log and change into our skates. After a short skate, it wasn’t long before my feet got cold and I’d want to go home. I must have been about ten years old, so someone had driven me there.

In Oliver, the snow didn’t last a long time, unlike Edmonton, we will see this white stuff until April. March is about the time I grow weary of snow and make my trek to Oliver to assist my sisters’ in their spring cleanups.