Verities in a Smoor

Eskimos (Aleutians) do not have 400 words for snow. This was one of those unexamined truths that is passed along without being examined. Scots, however, probably have that many words for different flavors of precipitation. I won't make a prounouncement until I have counted them all.

I dragged myself off the sofa Wednesday evening to go to my writer's group. My feet were heavy even before I saw the weather--an odd mixture of foggy-rainy-drizzly coolish air that confounded the darkness of the rural road for the 10 miles into town into a flat grey horizon with ghost lights emerging and disappearing in an eerie silence and a shoulder obscured in mist and wet-shine. This murky perspective pulled my routinely competent left-hand driving experience back into the awkward self-consciousness of the looking glass experience. Thus, I was doubly pleased to arrive safely at my destination and see my friends and fellow writers for the first time in nearly three months.

"Weird weather tonight," I offer into the conversational mix.

"Aye."

"We call it a smoor."

"Smoor?" I try wrapping my mouth around the new word trying not to think of "Smurf" or schmear. "Like a har?"

"Och aye, but faster moving."

And then the definitive answer for those already familiar with basic weather words:
"Och, a drookit misty swirl of rain."

Over cups of coffee or tea (more coffee drinkers than tea drinkers in case you wonder about the British stereotype), we settle slowly into the business of the group. Christine tells about a class that will be offered at the local college on writing for drama. I have learned that in order to ensure that things happen up here, it is a question of numbers. I say yes right away. I explain to the rest that I have adopted my own personal campaign to overcome Caithness reticence: "Say Yes first. Then figure out how to make it happen." We all have a good laugh to steel us for the hard work to follow. Some time during the evening each of us will read from our recent writings. It sounds easy, but it is not. First, you have to have been writing rather than thinking about it or talking about it. And then you put yourself on the line. The group is friendly and supportive and we are all fellow writers, but the stark terror of reading those lines out loud is as daunting now as it was when I was in the Bluebird reading group in first grade.

The only thing worse than those grim, sweaty palmed, quaking voice moments is the thought of never having written all the things in my head--that means the rubbishy ones, and, hopefully, the good ones.

George, a real writer and the group's leader, reminds us of the verities of writing, which in my paraphrase mean that you face the sweaty palm moments, the I would rather lie on the sofa than drive through a smoor moments, and the long hours alone writing because that is what it means to get to the brass ring or exorcising the voices in your head, whichever metaphor you feel is more apt.

As always, I test my newfound knowledge on Morris when I get home. In response to my question about a smoor, he describes it as a swirly snow that gets inside your nose no matter what you do. His expression suggests many times caught in a smoor. I count my blessings that all I had to do was drive through it.