I have survived my first NH winter! I grew up in the Midwest, so I know snow; I know ice; I know frigid, below zero temperatures. I’ve experienced that. But it’s different in NH. I don’t ever recall seeing this much snow at one time. This winter, I have shoveled more snow than I have in my entire life. At least, it feels that way.
Living here, in NH, has definitely altered my idea of winter. When talking to my family in the Midwest, after that first snowstorm, I told them we got over 2 feet of snow, but just eight inches later that week. Just. No big deal, just. You deal with it and move on . . . just. Just eight inches . . . not a problem . . . just. Just. When I said the same thing to friends in Kentucky, they were aghast. “Just!!!” they said. “Can you imagine what would happen if we got that much snow?!? The state would shut down!” And it virtually did, when they got fourteen inches of snow about a month ago. The school’s shut down, people were encouraged to stay in their homes. In fact, before the storm hit, the stores were packed shoulder to shoulder and stripped bare. Multiple stores had aisles of empty shelves. You would think it was the end of the world. They got another fourteen inches a couple weeks later. My wife showed me pictures from the town in which we had lived. It was like a scene from The Walking Dead, abandoned cars on either side of the road, along the highways and in ditches. To be fair, Kentucky is not equipped to deal with this amount of snow. The number of trucks available to plow are limited. The amount of salt is limited. They don’t expect that much snow, because they usually don’t get it.
It’s interesting. When I first moved to Kentucky, I didn’t wear a winter coat, or a scarf, or gloves. I wore a fleece, that was it. My co-workers wore winter coats, gloves and scarves wrapped around their heads. I had just moved from Iowa, where the wind chill frequently dropped the temperature 10 degrees or more. Sure the sign may say it’s 12 degrees, but really its below zero. I had just moved from winters where the wind bit into your face and you dare not lick your chapped lips for fear they would freeze. Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but that’s how it felt. (NH does get a few days like this, but just a few days. It’s 80-90% of the winter in the Midwest. I’ll take the snow over the cold any day.) But I noticed that after a couple winters in Kentucky, I started wearing gloves again. Then, I started wearing my winter coat and scarf. Don’t get me wrong, the winters were nowhere near as bad as the Midwest, but I began to feel the cold seep into my bones. So I wonder, what will I think of New Hampshire winters in a couple years? Right now, I’m too enraptured by the white of snow to complain about the depth of it. (Seriously, 5 feet! If I sat in my car, I couldn’t see my house!)
I became accustomed to Kentucky winters. It became just another winter. You wear a coat. You wear a scarf. You wear gloves. It’s just another winter. No big deal . . . let’s move on . . . just. Our body naturally acclimates and adapts to our surroundings. So much so, that our backache can become just another ache; our headache . . . just another headache. We can fool ourselves into thinking it’s no big deal . . . happens all the time . . . just. When really, we’ve grown accustomed to the pain. It’s so much an everyday thing, that we don’t notice it anymore. I hear it over and over again from people under chiropractic care, “I didn’t know I could feel this good!” “I feel 20 years younger!” “Things that I didn’t know even hurt are feeling better!” That I hear a lot. “I didn’t know my neck hurt, I thought it was just my back.” When really, we are adapting to the everyday pain that we have grown to expect. It’s just another day.
So as the weather warms and we rid ourselves of that last bit of persistent snow, as we begin to mow our lawns, begin our gardens and return to outdoor activities of hiking or running or biking, don’t become accustomed to the “justs” in life. But instead, adjust to a healthy spine through chiropractic care.
In health,
Dr. David
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