The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

It has been a long, long cold spell starting long before Christmas and lasting into January. Finally, though it is the middle of January and a January thaw seems to be taking place.

It is fine with me. By Friday I could tell it was close to the end of the cold spell but was the coldest day yet. I figured that my dog was really hurting from the cold. I knew I was not doing my car any favors by starting it several times a day just so it would go when I needed it to. The boiler in my house seemed never to shut down. I would turn it down at night for a rest and then hear it going back on in a half hour.

That is not to mention me. I was cold most of the time as well. I knew that sooner or later this cold spell would break and I also knew that we had had much worse in past years. Why, I remember one year when it never got above zero for thirty days. Then one day it reached ten above and everyone thought we were having a heat wave.

That year I had a cabin at Bear Paw Lake. I had rabbits nesting close to the fireplace chimney under the house. I had deer sleeping each night and part of the day in an L of the house where the winds could not get them and I had pheasants coming up to the house each day to eat what they could get of the bird feed.

That winter my cabin was a busy place. And there were times when I thought that all the livestock around the house was probably doing better than I was doing inside with my electric heat and wood fires in the fireplace.

So, it wasn’t a winter like that. Nor should it be. After all where is global warming when you need it? As I get older it is much easier to be put out with the cold. But I am happy now. It is around fifty above in the back yard. There is no pleasing me, though. Soon enough I will be cursing the hot, hot weather that will be back to the Montana prairies for another summer.