In the late 1980s and early 1990, Jean M. Auel wrote four books that I found entertaining to read because of their historical accuracy about the tools, traditions, and lives of prehistoric people. The books were The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, and The Plains of Passage. The setting for the books was during the height of the last ice age 35,000 years ago, and involved the lives of fictional characters woven around historically correct settings, conditions, and environments.

One quote in particular from the final book has stuck in my mind and it applies to me more than ever this year. Without boring you with details, the heroine and her boyfriend must make a treacherous crossing of a glacier in order to return to his home clan. People living at the edge of the glacier warned them that it would be a long, hard journey because the glacier is vast and there was a danger of getting stranded if they didn’t complete the crossing before the warm winds of spring began to blow.

To paraphrase their final admonishment by the locals, “You will know that the time is close when you feel yourself starting to go crazy.”

Well, the edge of the glacier and the spring winds had better be right around the corner because I feel myself going crazy. Picture me as Jack Nicholson in The Shining , only substitute a 7 iron for the axe. My reaction to one more snow flake will cause Freddie Kruger to cringe in the corner, whimper like a baby, and beg for mercy.

Needless to say, the heroine and her boyfriend narrowly escaped death (and lunacy) on the glacier and I imagine I will do the same with this winter. The big advantage they had was that they didn’t have a golf course waiting for them on the other side of the ice.