Meteorological Winter

Saturday we had planned to run yet another 5-K, the Reindeer Run in Brevard, and had even gone so far as to book a room at the Sunset Motel Friday night so we could get an early start.  The Sunset is a great little place we discovered through Tripadvisor several years ago, conveniently located and frugally priced, reminiscent of the roadside motels of the 50s in their pink and turquoise neon glory.

Saturday morning, we awoke to cloudy skies, and as we made our preparations, we could see the band of heavy rain moving inexorably toward Brevard on the radar.  By race time, 9:00 a.m., a cold rain was indeed falling, and not without some regrets we decided to abandon our plans ("bag it," in runner parlance).  Both of us have run marathons in the rain before (and after four months of training, what else can a prepared runner do?) but this race had been merely another last-minute 5-K and we had not registered.  It will be an event to put on the calendar for next year.

So we had a real breakfast and a good cup of coffee (not motel coffee in a teabag) at Quotations, and a little later some delicious soup at the imperfectly spelled Kitchn (formerly Jamie's Creole Kitchen).  We packed up, and in increasingly heavy rain we drove south on Highway 276, past Caesar’s Head State Park, fog lights on, squinting in the cold rain and fog, finally arriving in Clemson in time to have a nice visit with Martha’s Aunt Anne Sellers.  Dinner was something of a Christmas tradition, an exceptional meal with Anne at Paesano’s, and then a play the next day.  The play was at the Clemson Little Theater, a matinee performance of a clever little play called A Seusified Christmas Carol.  "Imagine a Cat In a Victorian Hat and it may put you in the mood for this whimsical treatment of Dickens' beloved Christmas tale in wacky rhymed couplets."  There were many, many children in the audience!  The rain had stopped by lunchtime, and when we came out of the theater, we discovered that the temperature had soared to 71 degrees.  We returned to Highlands after the play where it was also unseasonably warm.  Monday morning we went up to Town and enjoyed very pleasant running conditions, savoring these last few warm hours of a season that would soon be gone.

Meteorological Winter is a term I only recently learned, and it differs from Astronomical Winter by beginning on December 1 rather than on the Winter Solstice, thereby more accurately reflecting the actual temperatures and weather conditions.  Yesterday and today, the temperature indeed plummeted, and wind chills are forecast to be as low as 10 degrees by tomorrow morning.  I walked a mile in brisk north-westerly winds this afternoon, snow flurries flying wildly around, thinking how rapidly conditions can change this time of year and to what extremes the runner must adapt himself.  

And so it is winter, and the north wind blows cold in Highlands, making running problematic.  My friends Fred and Vickie can content themselves with the treadmill this time of year, but I have never found a treadmill that can accommodate either my frame of mind or my frame of body.  It is a matter now of running when we can, slowly becoming acclimated to this new bleak but hopeful advent season just beginning.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.