There is no more unforgiving collision of space and time than Fargo in February. When those two lines intersect the psyche starts to break down. Infinite winter. Infinite cold. This is our forever, but we’ll never find a new normal. We’ll never adapt. Too much white can blinds the eyes. Our necks seize up from shoulders lifting to block the northern winds. We dread work but crave gardening, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the gutters.
It’s hard to walk on ice.
Cars are dirty with salt. Factory heat turns to smoke in sub-zero air. Bunnies die under decks. Recess is canceled and kids don’t feel real air for weeks. Vacations are booked and canceled as planes are grounded by a winter cruel enough to say: you thought you could leave? You chose this.
Is it possible to have Stockholm Syndrome with a season? A place?
Then, there gets to be a point in February where we think it’s over: we have killed everything. (And yes, “we” are accomplices to the brutality.) There is no way the trees and grass and squirrels could possibly endure this murderous cold for so long. And then one day in late spring, — a chasm in the space-time continuum. A drop of water falls from an icicle, and then another. In that little drop we ourselves reflected in new light. That little drop of water reminds us that the earth endured, nay, thrived, and we will too.