the squirrels are trying to tell me something

The days are chillier and night seems to come so dark and so early to my my office tower window that sometimes it shocks me. Not only do the years seem to slip by faster with each birthday, but these days! They barely start before they're over.

And it's been 'chilly' for a while now (although, my people in Yellowknife will not find it funny that I'm calling 0C chilly and I don't blame them.) It's also been a month since I've walked home from work with any sun. But these aren't the hints I'm using as evidence that the summer is now doing its best impression of the Yellow Pages or the physical map in the face of google ubiquity... and by that, of course, I mean it's becoming a thing of the past.

It was apparent today, as I walked through the park, that winter - in its snowy, frozen guise - is knocking on the door. And it was the squirrels - or lack of them - that showed me.

Squirrels are a little different here in Montreal than elsewhere, I've noticed. They are bigger and they are crazy and they seem to be everywhere. You'd think we were living in some post-apocalypse sometimes, the way these maniac rodents pounce on garbage bags and dive into garbage cans, ravenously ripping through bags to find some sustenance.

I once had lunch on a patch of grass near work and watched a squirrel hanging from a tree on its hind feet. His head was dangling down, arms were splayed out and his back was pressed against the tree. We wondered if this thing was dead and someone had nailed it to the tree. Nope. About five minutes later, it stretched up and ran away somewhere.

I've watched a squirrel cling motionless to the side of an apartment building for minutes at a time, trying to figure out how he was defying gravity. I've watched with amusement as two squirrels chased each other around the truck of a tree, each squirrel's tail just barely staying out of the other's grasp, like a perpetual carnival game. A squirrel ate my poutine in Parc Lafontaine a few weeks ago. And then he called over his friend and another. Soon there was an army hungry for the stuff.

And that's what I've become accustomed to when I walk through the park now. One curious squirrel will scout me. If it is comfortable with me, or if I'm eating something, it will follow and soon others will take notice and they'll do the same and before you know it, a whole gang of them will be chasing me through the park, waving up and down fluidly as they do.

It freaked out my mom when my folks were down here a few weeks ago. My dad started making squirrel sounds - tiktiktikitiktik - and he chuckled as squirrels, who were focused dead set on finding a nut, put up their heads, craned to see where the sound was coming from and then started to come toward us like he was a pied piper. He soon had 20 of the little suckers trailing him.

The squirrels really are furious here, but today, they were all gone. I walked through the park and there was nothing scurrying around. There were no scuffling leaves. The dogs didn't even beg their owners to unleash them, since they'd realized there was nothing worth chasing out there.

I guess all the squirrels must have decided it's time to pack away for the year. They must know something we don't.

This summer was so long and so hell hot - for me at least - that I can't fathom that this same place where I laid in puddles of my sweat for four months will be frozen over for the next five. I'm not mentally prepared for winter and snow and ice.

But the squirrels are and I guess I'm going to heed their advice.

I'll let you know how long it is until we are covered in snow.

it should come as snow surprise

Now I don't want to piss off any Northerners who read this, but I just lived through my first snowless November and to tell you the truth, I was turning a little batty. While the days flew by in a barely-distinguishable flurry and the darkness came earlier and earlier, not one flake of snow touched the ground and I was starting to wonder if what I was experiencing was real. How can it be 16 degrees in the last week of November? It's not possible.

Well, winter has arrived at last and while the first major snowfall usually leaves me depressed or rueful, this year, to be honest, I'm relieved. It was as if there was an itchiness inside my chest cavity that could only be scratched with an ice-scraper. From my kitchen window with a cup of coffee, I'm watching clusters of inanimate flakes scatter around in the lulling wind like pollen and I'm sighing. It's been snowing for hours now and there is a good foot of the sticky stuff sitting upon just about everything: the steps and railings of the fire escapes that wind up each of the brick buildings in my neighbourhood, the clock on the Molson Brewery building that's barely visible in the distance and the cars dormant in the parking lot in the alley behind my apartment.

I just took a walk and realized what effect snow like this has on a city.

I don't know if it's due to all the flakes taking up space in the air and if perhaps they muffle soundwaves by their existing, but the city is much quieter. I don't know if it's the fog and decreased visibility a heavy snowfall like this produces but it appeared three-quarters of the population had disappeared.

The city is just so much cleaner. Gone was the garbage and the puke puddles and the yelling and the honking horns.

The people who asked me for money yesterday had shovels in their hands.

I walked into a restaurant and in my happy cloud, ordered a cheeseburger and donair and one of those kids'-only, over-sugared grape drinks, and when I sat down to eat, I actually smiled and enjoyed the Anne Murray Christmas song that was playing on the radio. (Unforgivable, I know.)

The African cabbies that line up along St. Hubert were taking the snowfall seriously, dressing up in hyperbole, with parkas, mitts, scarves, large fur hats, and wiping the accumulating snow off their cabs each time they idled after struggling and slipping into the next spot in line following the first in line taking a fare. They'll figure out eventually that whenever it snows, it usually means it's warmer out.

When I got back, I threw my soaked socks in the laundry. My roommate came home. He isn't used to any of this, and he asked me what you are supposed to do with your shoes and socks and pants after coming inside on a day like this. Roll 'em up, I said. My friend from Australia has been excited for -- and shit-scared of -- this day for the past two months and it was one of the reasons she came to Montreal. I've been building it up, while also saying it's nothing major, for just as long, like I'm some sort of expert.

Coming from the North, I never thought the sight of snow would ever make me feel anything but disappointment. I never once thought I'd ever take snow for granted. Yet there I was, just last week, wondering when the hell I could strap on some skates and play some pond hockey or do some ice-fishing with my boss. I felt uneasy with Christmas fast approaching and no snowmen or toboggans around.

I may regret saying this in a month's time, but I have to admit, Snow, I'm happy to see ya.

if you dream it...

Spent last night (my first of four) in a hotel room and had one of those really weird dreams you tend to have in a foreign bed.

I was running around Iqaluit doing ridiculous errands (the types of things that don't even make an ounce of sense once fully awake) and the sky was grey and the snow was coming down in bathtubs. The snow was unrelenting and really coarse, like tiny throwing-stars. The flakes kept getting bigger too, and started to impede me from the things I needed to do. By the end of the dream, every grain of snow had become the size of a daisy, and looked like them too, except for the monotonous white colouring.

I woke up, snowblinded.

I pretty much hate winter, what with the cold and the darkness (not good for a Northerner, I know) and took the dream as an omen.

The room was cold, and I rolled around in bed for a lot longer than I should have, which is the norm. Eventually, guilt led me out of the warm pocket of air crafted between mattress and blanket.

Wiping the fog from my eyes, through the window, I noticed the fog outside, and the ubiquitous white on the ground, tops of buildings, roofs of cars, fading into the sea. About a three-inch layer of snow covered the city, the first real snowfall of the year (or the first time the Earth hadn't rejected the white stuff).

Seriously? Snow? Had I woken up in the middle of the night and unknowingly seen this, thus influencing the dream? Or (remember, I'm still very much asleep and full of magical thoughts) had I dreamt this snow into existence?

Still in a daze, and because my dream had climatized me to the season, I walked to work, soaking my sneakers, making my feet stinky(er), and allowed the nostalgia of winter to splash over me. I love walking through the snow in warm weather. Reminded me of BC ski towns, and hot springs, and primetime schoolyard snowball fights and all the things to look forward to for the next eight months. Basically, I was all about winter with a good connotation this morning.

Got to work and Carolyn said she and her boyfriend had both dreamt of snow the night before, too. Bizarre.

Of course, the snow didn't last. As the mercury slowly pushed past zero, the snow disappeared first on streets and then on paths where people walked and eventually from the entire lower city, and then receded gradually up the hills.

That was immaterial, though. The point was taken and the lesson learned.

No better way to wake up to winter, than to dream of a blizzard and awake to bliss.

Tonight, I think I'll dream about Amerie, or Zooey Deschanel, or Allison Stokke, or Obama in the White House.

Probably the image I'll wake up to tomorrow morning: "Look, I'm sorry..."