The Long, Hard Winter

It’s less than 24 hours after the Dec. 13 blizzard has ended. The snow has relented, but the winds continue. My husband, Jon, and I bundle up in thick winter gear and ski goggles to go check on the cattle and feed.

After getting the cows grained at Ellsworth, Jon wants to try and check the cows corralled inSusan Valley. He will plow ahead of me with the tractor, forging a path through the drifts so I can bring the feed pickup.

It takes us nearly an hour to travel the two miles down south, plowing the road as we go. The wind picks up even harder and the road begins drifting shut behind us. An iridescent cloud forms, hovering above the earth, like a thick, glittery fog. A ground blizzard like I’ve never seen before, it is snowing from the land up. It’s as if the prairie has thrown her head back in a defiant howl, emptying the contents of her stomach back up into the sky.

For four days the wind screams and tosses powdery snow in the air. Four days the cattle grow restless, locked up in corrals near the barns. Four days the highways are all closed, and the mail doesn’t run.We grow restless, too. Four days I watch the wind scrub bare spots open of snow on the ground and pile into ever-changing, ever-growing icy sculptures.

When the wind finally abates, Jon hooks on to the snowblower with the tractor. A giant beast of a machine that I’ve never seen used in all my 20years on the ranch. Jon’s dad bought it after the winter of 1978-79, the deep snows that year prompting the purchase. “Does it even work anymore?” I ask before the behemoth roars to life. It gobbles through the five- and six-foot snow drifts, throwing snow in an arc of white. I shudder as I watch.

Two days later, another blizzard rips across the hills. New snow dumpsfresh white powder over snowbanks thick with dirt. Roads blow shut again with snow, stranding motorists across western Nebraska, many people traveling for Christmas. Temperatures plummet to minus23 degrees, with wind chill at55 below. Pipes burst in homes, schools and businesses in Alliance.At the ranch, we can't start any of the vehicles – even plugging the tractors in doesn’t help. Cattle trail miles down the road, drifting over fences buried under snowbanks.

The day after the second blizzard, I peer out my kitchen window into the shrub next to the house. A starling hangs dead in the branches. Two days later, when we strike out to feed cattle, I spy a dead rabbit in the meadow next to a drift. I wonder in shock how many animals were lost in these storms.

December closes foggy and silent, snowing again. I stand as I photograph the falling snow, feeling weary and empty. The winter has only begun.

January turns the calendar to a new year, but snow and cold continue. Snowfinds its way into the water tanks, creating an icy slush. “If we don’t clear it out, it’ll freeze up and turn to thick blocks of ice,” Jon tells me. He hands me a shovel and grins. “Now we paddle.” We drag our shovels through the slush, paddling the slurry toward the leadpipe. It mixes and melts as we row in tandem, shoulders aching.

A cow slinks her calf – a miscarriage – and Jon says the stress of the winter is the likely cause. How many more will we lose before spring? We watch as a jackrabbit chews on the protein feed tub we’ve set out for the cows; range is scarce with the month-long snow cover, and the wild animals are looking for food.

I help shovel fluffy, thick snow out of bunks, tripping over frozen cow manure, coughing and sputtering in the cold. I gaze at the hills and the snow falling around us. Pale snow clouds blanket the sky so it’s blindingly white everywhere and disorienting; earth and sky as one solid snowbank. The wind blows hard enough for more road closures just in time for another blizzard to mark January’s end.

The mercury sags, dropping to 23 below zero again. I help Jon chop ice at the tanks, clearing the water for the cattle once more. Every fiber, every sinew of my deltoids is soon on fire and an ache builds in my back and forearms. The windmill creaks under a light breeze and a small stream pours from the leadpipe.

Early February brings a week of warmer temperatures, enough to see some snow melt. The hills take on a freckled appearance before another round of snow covers them on the 9th. A layer of mud forms between the still frozen ground underneath and the icy snow on top. We try to load steers to haul in a trailer, everyone slipping and falling in the frozen sludge.

It snows fresh on Valentine’s Day, after a day near 50degrees. A blizzard marks the 22nd, postponing all Ash Wednesday services. Temperatures drop again. Jon uses an ax to chop away thick snow and ice around the extension cords in the yard and unplugs the Christmas lights. Cattle walk up and over the sagging fence, buried old and anew under drifts, on top of hardened snow berms out onto the railroad tracks. It is a challenge getting them back and another to repair the frozen fence.

The snow melts slowly, and great brown areas span the sun-kissed tops and sides of the hills, leaving all the low spots, crevices and washouts still thick with snow. It gives the whole scene a liquid look – as if thick cream has been poured out over the hills – white pools gathered against the relief of brown. Deep snow remains on the southeast sides of fences, trees, houses and soapweeds, slumping lower after each warm day. The warm days are short-lived in February though, as another snowstorm caps the month and carries us into March. We bring the heifers near the barns and corrals, readying to calve in this mess.

The snow melts in March on days above 40 degrees. The sun tarries each night and stirs earlier each day. The length of light grows, I feel it now in my drives to and from work. The drifts soften into spongy, mushy snow. Old, tired, dirty snow. Snow that I chip away at on the sidewalk, the tired heaps that have been here for months. I jam my shovel into their depths, flinging ice and slushy snow away from wet pavement. Remnants of the December blizzards linger,holding fast their claim over spring. Not yet, they cry, not yet.

Jon tells me he continues to count consecutive days of snow on the ground. A cooperative weather observer, he says the record sheets ask, “Is snow on the ground?” And he answers yes. How many days is it now? 82? 83? I tire of counting the chops of winter’s ax.

A squall passes overhead. Dark, gray, towering clouds spit rain and sleet and ice. Jon worries we are running out of feed. He stretches the cattle; the feed must last through calving.

Five geese and four ducks land in the meadow. I spot red-winged blackbirds woven among the tall reeds and cattails, glittering with thick frost.

March is a blur of cold and calving, but warm sunshine dapples the jumble in between. By the first day of spring, the ground is still frozen, the lakes iced over, the temperatures too low. Even so, there are little signs of hope in the hills: ducks, geese, swans and gulls gather at the edges of opening water, blackbirds trill alongside a lone meadowlark and there beneath a retreating snowdriftare tender green shoots.

The five geese in the meadow double, then triple; there are at least two dozen waddling on the grass. The end of March brings one more snow to usher in April.

The full April pink moon hoists itself over the hills, scrambling through crunchy, icy grass.  More warm days follow, and the last remnants of the glacial landscape melts away at last.

On April 13, Jon records the first day with no visible snow in 2023, marking 120 consecutive days of snow on the ground since Dec. 13, 2022. Four months of snow. Four long months of cold and difficult winter.

April closes with a few more nods of winter’s grasp with more snow, more cold. But it melts quickly and the grass greens. By May we see a profusion of wildflowers, the start of one of the most beautiful, showiest summers we’ve ever seen.

At times, we wondered if we would make it through to this side of things. Through the long winter and onto green grass with the cattle, through calving and branding, through the school year fraught with new challenges for our little family. We ran out of hay, ran out of feed, ran out of help.

But made it we did, and for our winter-sore eyes, each wildflower that bloomed, each blade of grass that sprouted, each migratory bird that returned felt like a celebration more than ever before.

Gretel Ehrlich, Unsolaced