Do you remember how winter used to be? In the old days, sometime between when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the invention of computers, winter used to be snowy and cold. It would snow and blow for days at a time. The school bus couldn’t make it to our farm even with chains strapped around their tires. We shoveled a path to the barn, the chicken house, and the wood shed, and stayed within those perimeters until the weather cleared. We stayed busy when the snow was deep.   
    We flopped over backwards into the soft blanket and made angel silhouettes where the snow fell smooth and level. Forts were built alongside steep-walled drifts and tunnels were dug for escape routes. The runner sleds traveled the network of paths: first transporting pails of feed from the granary for the livestock, then piled high with snow chunks and younger siblings with scarves tied over their noses, and when it was time to warm up, pieces of oak for the stove in the kitchen. We decorated the garden with circles dissected like a sliced pie for games of Fox and Goose. If there was enough cream and sugar, we’d collect icicles from the low eaves of outbuildings and make ice cream with a hand-crank machine in the basement by the floor drain.
    It was not all fun and games. Often it meant helping to clean the barn with a tool that we called a pitchfork. It took a lot of little square bales of straw to keep the animals clean and warm. Climbing up in the haymow to throw them all down the chute was only part of the job. When we finished distributing slabs of straw to all of the pens, it was time to drag little bales of hay through the snow banks to bunks and feeders in the yards. We helped Dad thaw out cattle waters and broke the ice on stock tanks for the calves to drink. While we worked and played we tried to stay warm, but often we’d return to the house with chilblains.   
    This winter reminds me of the winters we used to have, back in the old days, before global warming melted our January snow. It is reminiscent of a time when everyone wore snowboots and owned a stocking hat, a period in history when it was common to put studded snowtires on your car. Yes, it feels like the winters we used to have. The snow piles are as high as the tractor and bucket can reach. We’ve parked the car, depending on the four-wheel-drive pickup for our primary transportation. Stocking up on extra groceries has proven to be a smart precaution. I’m not as fond of playing in the snow as I used to be, a characteristic shared by most of us who can speak with authority about the realities of extreme winters from the past.