THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090083
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
IN THE SPLIT seconds before my head cracked on the icy pavement, and my left elbow began to sting, I thought about falling - this strange airiness under me - and how to prevent it.
What should I do? I had nothing to grab. The ground slipped away, and my body landed with a whack on the bridge where I had stopped to photograph some ducks in a canal.
Minutes before, my brother in Michigan had issued a long-distance warning: ``Watch out for the ice. Sometimes you can't see it.''
He was right. After 12 slip-free years of walking icy Baltimore streets with the wrong footwear, I go down with the ducks.
Only after I had imagined a concussion to do Troy Aikman proud, and had experienced an epiphany during which I promised to stop my mid-life whining if only my head were all right, did I realize another painful truth: I had lost my Northern bragging rights. I had become one of the ``idiots'' whom all smug, winter-weather-wise know-it-alls, myself formerly included, malign.
Last Sunday afternoon, I decided to have an excellent Outer Banks adventure, trudging a mile and a half through the snow - an incredible five inches - from my home to the ocean.
I longed to see the beach and preserve it on film. Having felt cheated by ``the blizzard of 1996'' that didn't reach the Carolina coast, I yearned to be out in the winter wonderland, testing my new boots, reddening my cheeks, and seeing what the diehard fools in four-wheel-drive vehicles were up to.
Ragging on other people for not respecting Nature and behaving prudently before Her majesty is a time-honored tradition on the Outer Banks. In the summertime, the ocean's rip tides and undertows bring on the tsk-tsk of ``They just don't respect the ocean's force . . . .'' In the wintertime, when ice turns roads slick, the chorus becomes: ``They just don't know how to drive . .
During the Saturday ice storm that preceded the snow, I, wise Northerner that I am, slowly maneuvered my Honda over icy roads, scoffing at the beach cowboys busting their four-wheel-drive broncos. Everyone I met that day had an ``idiot in a four-wheel-drive'' story: tailgating or tailspinning, speeding, colliding, skidding into a ditch.
But now I had no room to talk. I had become one of ``them.''
After I fell, I briefly considered turning back, as a mental image of blood pooling within my head formed. But I persisted onward, my mission undone. Besides, I reasoned, I'm better off losing consciousness on the roadside, where a cowboy might spot me, than at home alone.
But when one of the vehicular monsters spun precariously close to me, I began to wonder if my sense of adventure masked a death wish.
The beach never looked so inhospitable, the ocean gray and foamy, the wind startlingly frigid. Still, I entertained a stroll down the icy sand. (I couldn't get enough traction.)
That night the full moon spilled over the wondrous landscape. It, too, beckoned.
There's something oddly transforming and invigorating about confronting the harshness of nature and prevailing, even when the effort is quite small and foolish.
I awoke Monday with a stiff neck, stiff back, stiff elbow. I lifted my head with my hands and propped it in front of a window. Beholding the sunny, white grandeur of the day, I reached for my camera.
Bragging rights terminated, and thus relieved of common sense, I wondered where I might venture forth. As I sipped my morning coffee, I watched the four-wheel-drive vehicles cut an icy path.
I popped a Tylenol and stayed home. Even a hard-headed woman needs rest. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB