Blizzards tested our humanity

That the word "blizzard" was coined in Iowa should come as no surprise to this state's residents.

While those east of the Mississippi River certainly are not immune to dizzying snowstorms in which winds whip past 35 miles per hour and visibility is reduced to mere feet, something in the character of a prairie settler allowed him to find a special moniker for this fury. As blizzards tested our humanity, pioneers realized it was a storm in a category all of its own.

Legend says Spencer's Lephe Wells Coates read a story about a violent-tempered Mr. Blizzard in her Free Baptist paper. During a nasty snowstorm in 1866 she remarked "My, this is a regular old man Blizzard of a storm." A state newspaper later repeated the term.

But there's more to Iowa's snowstorms than a cute story.

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In 1870, when men got around by horse rather than car and roads were not plowed because they were only mud paths broken through the brush, blizzards could not be easily escaped. With no satellites to track weather patterns, storms surprised settlers like lions ambushing prey in the bush.

March 13 of that year was one such disaster. That morning, the men of rural Hillsdale took advantage of the warm weather and went into town. By noon, the sky had clouded, and a bitter chill had descended. Though just reaching their destination, they decided to turn around.

"Big flakes had split up into a million little pieces and were coming at us stinging and slantways," one man in the party later wrote. "Every second it was growing blacker and thicker and colder."

Most of the men made their way back home as a group. But two left a mere 15 minutes later. Three days passed, after the storm had dropped temperatures to 35 below zero, and search parties were dispatched.

Both men - brothers - were found frozen to death in snow drifts.

• • •

Today, blizzards are at worst an annoyance. On occasion, ice storms leave some without electricity, but most of us warm up some hot chocolate, flip a switch to light the fireplace and from the vantage of an easy chair watch the snow swirl outside.

Indeed, the New York Times editorialized last week that the snowstorm hitting the East Coast "brought a sense of peace that momentarily overshadowed thoughts of war and terrorism."

With our modern building materials and massive power grids, we rejoice in the slowing of life that blizzards bring. We've conquered nature. Humanity's violent tendencies remain, however.

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Near the end of the Civil War, brothers Joe and Kiren Mulroney and friend Henry Archer volunteered to deliver food and supplies to Union troops stationed in Estherville. A blizzard came upon them New Year's Day 1864, but they marched onward, knowing the soldiers would starve if the cargo did not reach them.

"The mercury was frozen solid and the thermometers was down to half a hundred below," one pioneer wrote, "and the howling, cracking, biting, whirling snow was so dense in the air that they could not see the length of a sleigh and team."

When the three men happened upon a cabin in the middle of the storm, the family let them in. They cut off Kiren's shoes, stockings and trousers. Both legs were frozen from the kneecaps to the toes.

After resting, the three men continued on their mission. Together, they got the food to the troops.

• • •

My father once told me a story about the blizzard of 1956, when he was only a child and helped rescue a cow half-buried by snow. I shiver whenever thinking of that tale, not so much from the story itself which is frightening enough, but from the way my father, always so strong and silent, told it with passion and precision, as if it were the one event that shaped his life.

The week had been mild enough, so the cattle were left to graze in the pasture. Unexpectedly one October night, like a stampede of white devil horses, the storm swept onto the Great Plains, instantly deluging the land in harsh winds and several feet of snow. Through the darkness and blasting winds, my grandfather and two of his sons, one of them my father, herded them back into the farmyard.

But as daylight broke, a lone bellow resounded across the cornfield, growing weaker with each cry. They waded through three-foot drifts toward the cow, until reaching the struggling brown mass. Caked with ice, its breath felt cold and it smelled dry like parched dung, but grandfather was insistent; no cow would die from his lack of trying to save it.

So they dug out the animal and then a path across the pasture, harassed at every shovelful by straying snow, and pushed the cow until it reached the barn. A companion, grateful to see its friend returned, licked the ice clean off. The cow survived.

• • •

My grandfather didn't need to save that beast. She wasn't worth that much money.

He just didn't want to see it suffer, just as Joe and Kiren Mulroney and friend Henry Archer didn't want to see their nation's troops suffer. They were willing to sacrifice because they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't.

Those prairie blizzards challenged their humanity. Such a test, where the stakes are our very souls, indeed deserves a word all of its own.

(originally published Feb. 24, 2003)