When we moved from L.A. to Paris, Illinois nineteen autumns ago, someone asked me what I thought of the cooler weather months here. Wrapping the third scarf around my neck and adjusting my earmuffs, I said, “I try not to think about them too much.”
Not that spinning off the
icy highway into a ditch isn’t my idea of a fun new game. Or that I don’t enjoy drinking seventeen cups
of tea a day from September to March—I always did enjoy that burst of energy a
strong cup of tea gives. I even discovered
a brand of long underwear that are made from silk, so you don’t have to buy
clothes two sizes larger than usual. That’s always gratifying.
Did you know there is a
surefire way to predict winter weather in the fall? According to early American
folklore, you can forecast the harshness of an upcoming winter by examining the
brown band around a wooly worm’s middle. The thinner the brownish red band, the
harsher winter will be.
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| Drawing by Ron Levellie |
Scientific? Hardly. Accurate? Rarely. But my overly biased wooly worm reports make us laugh every time. And giggles help us get through the long, freezing months better than gripes. I imagine even the wooly worms laugh. At me.
