The other day on my trip home for Thanksgiving, we traveled through a windstorm in Denver. The ride was bumpy the whole way in, and swung like a hang glider as we rose out of the city. It was entirely unpleasant.
But the trip got me thinking about how we try and pretend weather doesn't exist in this country.
I'm not advocating that plane trips should be canceled because of a little wind storm. But the idea certainly isn't applied only to travel in bad weather.
In the summertime, we have air-conditioning so we can't feel the heat. We have refrigeration units that mean that we can transport meat and produce long distances. We think that we deserve to be able to drive in snow and ice, so we have four-wheel drive that will allow us to drive through the worst blizzards.
Where have these modern inventions gotten us?
We have global warming, high food prices and thousands of car accidents each year in the wintertime.
It's all part of a larger issue: we aren't listening to Mother Nature. Locally-sourced food was once the easiest to eat, and it was also more nutritious and better sustained a local economy. Even in the age of restaurants, locally-sourced food was the lifeblood of unique, mom-and-pop places. In the advent of refrigerated trucks, we lose all of this because of the expectation of travelling produce and out-of-season produce year round.
There are perhaps solutions to weather-related problems like locally-sourced food, but what about the others? They are more difficult because we are too used to being comfortable and the world is too fast.
I don't want to go without air conditioning for a summer. I did once or twice, but I had a fan to make up for it. Even though I know the consequences of air conditioning, it would be difficult to forgo it altogether. People would spend the time complaining and getting sleepy. But there certainly isn't time for naps in the summer. Life is much too busy.
Same for driving in winter. We are too busy or too important to be without our agency to drive, even for a day.
But isn't it blissful when you allow yourself to be trapped from your busy life by the elements? You turn off the air-conditioning and take a heat-soaked nap or a swim in the lake. Your driveway is covered in eight inches of snow, so you get under a heap of blankets and drink hot chocolate.
The bottom line is we need to remember that we really are not that important. We really are not that busy. Whatever we do, Mother Nature will always get her way.