Crummy Weather and Communitas

It's a beautiful day in the Madison neighborhood.

If you like snow and sleet and ice. Which, on principle, I don't. In the past few years I've spent more hours shoveling snow than anyone should in their lifetime. Most of the time it's to help my father with his snow removal business back home, but now I am legally obligated to shovel about 60 feet of sidewalk outside my building to save more than $350 on rent.

Anyway, on Saturday December 1st Madison and Southern Wisconsin saw about 6 inches of snowfall followed by heavy sleet and rain. Within 24 hours I shoveled the walkway twice, my car once, and three other cars in the neighborhood. Not necessarily fun tasks, but I was never alone on them. Friends and neighbors and strangers all pitched in at different times and expected nothing more than a "thank you" in return. And for all the shoveling that we collectively did, everyone deserved a strong scotch at the very least.

I'm still trying to figure out if it's just because of the weather that everyone stood up to give a hand, or if it's this underlying sense of community that Madison has. Maybe it's because we all live in this strange Midwestern bubble in which most people are genuinely kind and polite to one another. Or maybe people reason that, if they help one person out of a snow drift, karma will bless them with a kind stranger when they get stuck. Or maybe everyone was bored and looking for something to do until the city plows actually cleared up the streets.

I am not really the winter outdoors-y type. I can handle summers outside, but winter in Wisconsin is inherently cold, and I am biologically adverse to freezing temperatures. I've been campaigning myself against winter in Wisconsin/Madison for the longest time but the left side of my brain can't seem to hear the arguments when lease-signing time comes around every year. I guess it's not so bad to weather the cold and snow as long as everyone else goes through it at the same time; and is there to help shovel out a fellow Madisonian.