Side Roads: No country for old women

Every year, it’s the same. Summer comes, and I complain about the heat. Winter comes, and I complain about the cold.

I have no complaints about spring or fall, since we don’t seem to have them anymore.

Not having a disaster elsewhere, such as a tsunami or another Hurricane Katrina, to distract me this year, I’ve been all too aware of what’s been going on here. Last summer was the hottest I can recall, and terribly dry, although I think I’ve seen worse droughts.

This winter has given new meaning to the words “skate park.”

Walking to my car in a parking lot one day, I gave serious consideration to learning how to use skis, or at least ski poles. A couple of sticks to stab into the ice would have come in handy as I made my way across a solid sheet of the stuff.

For many years, I have never given much thought to living anywhere that didn’t have a change of seasons. I didn’t want to live where the trees weren’t maple and oak and poplar, and springs didn’t bubble up out of the earth and creeks weren’t filled with water slipping over a familiar variety of rocks. I didn’t want to live in permanent exile away from big, fat flakes of falling snow and the beauty of the bare branches of trees encased in ice.

This winter, as it took me a half-hour’s worth of baby steps to cross 20 feet of ice, something snapped, and thankfully, it wasn’t a bone.

It was just me.

I couldn’t help thinking, to paraphrase the Coen brothers’ movie title, this is no country for old women.

For the first time in my life, I really understood why people move to Florida.

I gave it some careful consideration myself, weighing the pros and cons.

Here, there is the heat and the cold, ice and snow, tornadoes and humid, breathless days. There, the weather, I hear, is generally quite nice, except when hurricanes come along and people have to board up their houses and shops and jump into cars and drive inland and get caught in huge traffic jams and run out of gas and so do the service stations.

Here, there are rattlesnakes and copperheads and herds of deer that like to play chicken with cars. There, there are insects and reptiles, including a booming population of Burmese pythons in the Everglades that only the alligators can handle (go, gators!).

Here, there are people I know and love and care about and places that are as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of shoes. There, there are sunny beaches and new friends to meet and new places to see.

In the end, I decided that home is where the heart is, and for now, my heart is right where it belongs.

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Persinger is community editor for The Tribune. She may be reached at (812) 523-7063 or jpersinger @tribtown.com.