Chipping Away

Spring in South Dakota is the worst kind of flirt. She’ll toss her hair and bat her eyes and say she’d love to go out sometime, but if you try to set a date, she’ll leave you cold.

Literally. So cold.

I’m not sure how many consecutive days we’ve been snowed under where I live, but it’s a lot. There was snow on the ground when my family drove south for Christmas. We returned just in time for a New Year’s Day blizzard that dumped a foot and a half more. Add our most recent storm onto that, and it’s no wonder we still have icy sidewalks and snow piles topping 9’ in parts of town.

All this winter seemed appropriate in January, when daylight was so fleeting. No one expected warmth or growth in those conditions. But now the days have gotten longer, and the angle of the sun more hopeful. We’ve had a couple of days top 40 degrees even.

It’s just a tease, though. If and when spring finally makes a commitment to us, it’ll be several more weeks.

Incongruous as our current allocation of daylight may be with the bleak scene around us, it has at least helped melt most of the snow and ice off the pavement. This morning, for the first time in months, I walked to my favorite coffee shop without fearing for my life. Only the shaded and low-lying areas still have ice on the sidewalk, and I live in a town small enough that I can walk on the street to get around those.

Unfortunately, the garage at our house faces north. For most of the day, it is in the shadow of trees or the house itself. Try as we might to clear it after each snow, it is now packed with ice—more than four inches on the bottom half, nearest the street. Each time one of us pulls a vehicle into the garage, it’s an adventure.

Every year, I tell myself not to worry with the ice, that nature will ultimately take its course and clear everything out. But I am not such a patient man. Despite my better judgment, I am out there multiple times per week, spreading melting chemicals to weaken the ice, kicking it with my heels, pounding it with my mini-sledge hammer. We won’t talk about how many shovels have been sacrificed to my ice removal project.

Working on the ice feels like most of life’s long-term ventures—paying down debt, parenting, holding a marriage or a lasting friendship together. It’s hard to see much progress from day to day, which makes it easy to want to quit.

I can’t, though. Somewhere inside me is an optimist, someone who actually thinks that the world can get better, and that individuals can be part of improving it. Knocking off ice doesn’t solve climate change or any other big problem. But it bears witness to the idealist within me, who sincerely believes that we only truly lose when we give up entirely.

I think of my battle with the ice as a kind of spiritual discipline, a reminder not to get caught up in the moment. We may only be capable of small acts, but taken together those little things can accomplish big things. As Ted Lasso (quoting Anne Lamott) reminds us, we get there bird by bird.

Yesterday, I found a late morning window of opportunity, when a few minutes of sun and temps just above freezing softened the ice floe around its edges. I took my hammer and chipped away for maybe ten minutes before I went back into the garage. As I got ready to close the door, I looked out over the work. There’s still plenty to do, but I can see pavement now where I couldn’t before.