Retrospect: a winter story, 1977

Self-tutoring about past events: the tutor mentions an afternoon in winter 1977.

Back in PEI, living on the base outside Summerside, we could get some big snows. On the weekends, kids would roam the base looking for the best snowbanks, the highest snow hills the ploughs had made, etc. Snowball fights or “King of the Hill” games would develop as rival groups would want to claim an attractive snow formation. It was a kid’s winter lifestyle on the base.

One time, we had a really big snow drift in our yard, right behind our house. We lived in a duplex, and the drift spanned both sides. The neighbour kids and I discovered the drift about the same time that morning, but we didn’t do anything about it just then. We walked around the neighbourhood, looking for what else had happened. In the sun that often came after a snowstorm, we navigated the streets and fields, then returned to our respective homes for lunch.

That afternoon, we returned to our back yard and looked at the drift: we silently agreed to do something with it, so started to build a fort. We got snow shovels and starting carving blocks of snow from the drift and stacking them.

The snow had been heavy, so we had a lot to work with: the drift might have reached ten feet, but even on the ground the depth was probably 60cm. Moreover, we had four strong kids and the whole afternoon. Therefore, we laid the first layer much bigger than most snow forts we’d seen: I’d estimate it might have been fifteen feet long, ten feet broad. We cut the blocks from inside the area to put around the perimeter.

We worked hard for about two hours, then I started to notice the light had faded. Clouds had returned, but you could still tell the sun was low in the sky. The light continued, gradually, to fade, along with our energy. Our blocks were less well formed, some of those in the upper layers being almost round. The walls, by then, were about five feet tall.

Eventually, in twilight, the snow was blue, not white. We talked happily about the fort and just anything, content with our efforts and our fatigue. One of my friends got a spray bottle from his mother, filled with water, with which he spritzed the outside of the fort: he explained the water would freeze, providing armour to the fort. Another feature the fort had was a couple of windows.

Eventually we were called in for dinner; I forget who was last to go in. It had been a great day. Later that night I returned, on my own, to the backyard to examine the fort. In the quiet darkness it stood with resolve, like it would always be there.

A few days later some older kids showed up and a snowball fight ensued. They were older and more numerous than we, and half-wrecked the fort. We later patched it up. This was probably in early January. However, in the Maritimes you can get heavy rain and warm temperatures for a few days at a time during winter. Through several thaws the fort gradually shrunk, then refroze, and so on; it survived in some form until April, long after we’d stopped using it. It was the most ambitious snow fort I’ve ever participated in making.

To my knowledge, that house still stands: I wonder how many times that situation has repeated, over the past 43 years?