Roads
The roads, when the city could no longer attend to them or power their stop lights, were still roads, just as much as they were roads before, but now they were passive things. Trails for cars. Tree limbs bent over and blocked side streets. You couldn't take any turn for granted because the packed snow had smeared across the road and camouflaged into an icy mottled gray. We took turns at intersections and sometimes it didn't go as planned. Slow motion traffic accidents happened all day long and it was unclear whether or not they were emergencies. Civilization had deformed and broken in some way but we didn’t know how civilization was built, what it was constructed of, where its bones were located, so we did not understand the nature of the injury. Was civilization a thoughtfully built thing that could be repaired, or was it something you throw away when it breaks?
Driving in Denver, I would never keep chains on in town, it's against the law because they destroy the roads, which are adequately plowed, sanded and salted. When driven on dry pavement, they make an awful noise, a combination of sleigh bells and high caliber machine gun. It sounds like they are damaging the tires. I took them off and put them on several times and finally left them on. The patches of ice and snow were too many and too hard to predict.
The exit from Sandra Murieta Blvd to North hwy 1 had over a foot of fresh powder. Its gracefully banked downward turn had always called for speed for the onramp and now it looked like a toboggan run. The patch below the overpass held black ice in the shadows. It was nature now. The sidewalks worked the same and were well used. They were no longer recreational, people used them with a sense of purpose. Pedestrians wrapped up like babushkas made their way and stood in line at convenience stores like bread lines. Downtown was bustling a little bit. People searched for food or trudged through whatever unavoidable mission they had assigned themselves. They looked like little Russian dolls of crisis, in layers of Covid, the freeze, and its’ resulting complications.
This essay series is part of a project to document Texan’s experiences during the 2021 freeze. Do you have a story to share about the 2021 Texas freeze? Share it with my publication, Freeze Stories, on Medium. If its not filled with filth, I’ll publish it. Ok, I’ll publish it even if its filled with filth.