Blizzard wimps and warriors: How the great divide plays out in a storm
Paula Tilson wears goggles to confront the elements as she watches the snow being removed near the Arlington Courthouse at the height of the storm. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
By Steve Hendrix January 24 at 6:23 PM
Temple Morris loves a good blizzard. She loves it right out there on the other side of her double-paned glass.
“I can see it right out the window, and that’s where it should it stay,” said Morris, 48, reached by phone Sunday where she was guaranteed to be: In the Takoma Park, Md., house where she had been happily nesting since the first flakes of Friday.
Her husband, Ray Hulser, 53, also adores a blast of winter, but he prefers to take his square in the face. Hulser spent six hours of Saturday, the 15th snowiest day in D.C. history, out in his element — sledding, shoveling, hiking back and forth among friends and neighbors. “I really like to get out as much as possible.”
The two stand on opposite sides of a great white divide between those who rush to grapple with winter on its own turf and those who gladly retreat to the climate-controlled comfort of wood fires, soup pots and Scrabble. Watching the gathering blizzard Friday, some began to hunker and others, eying the blowing snow, began to hanker. The Innies and the Outties; weather wimps and weather warriors.
“Cabin fever comes really quick to us,” said Heath Simon, father of a confirmed family of Go-Outers in McLean, Va. The federal law enforcement officer is often out the driveway as soon as the plow has passed, making grocery runs for the neighbors, clearing other people’s walks, flinging snowballs.
What the D.C. area looks like after epic blizzard
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The storm has stopped, and the cleanup is only beginning — but not without a snowball fight or some sledding first.
He began his winter weekend with a long “treacherous” drive to the veterinarian’s office Friday night and was shoveling by 5 a.m. Saturday. “I was antsy,” he said.
“He was telling the girls every hour on the hour, ‘We need to shovel,’ ” said his wife, Jeanine Simon. “They were like, ‘Come on, Dad.’ ”
Mostly, they all agree.
“We’re just really used to getting out and about,” said Simon, who grew up this area, but spent 10 years in Massachusetts being tutored in a flintier way of winter. “Around here we have Snowzilla and Snowmageddon and make it sound like the world is going to end. New Englanders treat it like something to enjoy.”
But those who like it cozy and those who like it frozy can live serenely under one roof (or rather, one under the roof and the other out in the yard). Hulser, who grew up in upstate New York, delights in getting the kids out and still loves a good sled run himself. For him, whiteout equals go out.
His wife, meanwhile, had made two vats of soup, a heaping stroganoff and organized two closets. She is equally delighted to stay where the teakettles are steaming and the period dramas are streaming.
“I watched three episodes of ‘Downton Abbey.’ My husband thinks it was only one,” Morris confessed.
Enjoy a massive snowball fight without being pelted
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