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BY SUMMIT UP
May 15, 2008

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Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world’s only daily column with a growing understanding of what it must be like to live inside a snow globe.

You know what we mean — one of those souvenir tchotchkes with something like a miniature Alamo or Empire State Building inside that you can shake to create an internal blizzard.

We’ve been getting the idea lately Summit County is actually a cosmic snow globe toy, and every few days the giant unseen hand of a giant unseen child reaches down to give us a good shake.

“Isn’t it cool, the way I can make it snow?” the annoying kid asks his equally annoying friends.

Cool for him, maybe.
And cool maybe for the tiny number of skiing and riding diehards who prefer endless winter.
We hope they’re happy.
They could be just as happy in New Zealand or Argentina, though, where it’s supposed to be winter now.

We resolved several weeks ago to stop complaining about the weather.
So, we’re not complaining here, really we’re not. What good would it do anyway? Truly we’re grateful not to have any devastating cyclones or earthquakes (knock on wood) up here in the High Country.

We admit we’re glad we have a vehicle and our taxpayer dollars have allowed CDOT to build roads that run out of the county.
Because of these blessings, we were able to stick our noses into some blooming lilacs in Denver.
We saw green. We wore shorts.

Our friends who have more time and money are scattered to the four winds at the moment: Mexico, Thailand, Chile, etc. We even have one friend who’s leaving for Norway next week.
We’re not sure if the weather will be much better there, but at least she’ll have more oxygen.

Sitting still in our Summit County snow globe finally drove us into the study of psychology, and we ran across the work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
Years ago, she developed a general outline for the stages of grief.
The different emotions associated with loss tend to follow the same pattern in most people, she said.
In a nutshell, they go something like this: Denial — “This isn’t really happening;” Anger — “It just isn’t fair;” Bargaining — “I’ll do anything, just let him live until Christmas;” Depression — “It doesn’t matter anyway, life sucks;” and finally, Acceptance — “I guess it’ll be okay.”

We think fulltime Summit County residents have experienced a similar process this year in their relationship with the weather.
Our feelings haven’t been static — they’ve evolved over time.

With a nod to Kubler-Ross, we’d describe the pattern as follows:

1. Delight — “This is the kind of snow I moved here for. I love it!”

2. Irritation — “I’m sick of shoveling. Enough already!”

3. Depression — “What’s the use? I’m just going to stay inside and watch ‘Law & Order’ reruns for 24 straight hours…”

4. Fugue (known in some circles as “Spring Run-off”) — “I gotta get outahere!! How do people live like this?!?!?”

5. Amusement — “Wow, it’s snowing on May 15! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Just like the stages of grief, some unfortunates get stuck in a particular phase.
Those sitting in third-stage Depression could probably use whatever drug the first-stage Delight people must be taking.
To us, second-stage Irritation and final-stage Amusement seem to be the norm.
We’re not absolutely sure about that, though. Anyone stuck in the Fourth-stage fugue is, after all, long gone — back to wherever they came from.

We know that we’ve personally passed through the first four this winter and now sit solidly in Amusement.
Really, you have to laugh. It reminds us of what a friend of ours told us about the nature of great change:

“At first it gets terrible,” he said. “And then it gets funny.”

***

It’s Friday, and we’re out, rolling in the snow and laughing our butts off. E-mail us atsummitup@summitdaily.com.