【雪まつりが終わると春へ・・・かなぁ？】

　昨日は週の半ばの祝日休日。どうも中間の月曜日が変調させる日程で、どうも休日気分が盛り上がらないままで過ごしておりました。そんな浮かない気分でいたら、元気いっぱいの除排雪車両群がわが家前の道路に出動してくれていました。
　「中学校通学路」になっているので、わが家前の道路は除排雪作業では優先度が高いし、当然頻度も高い。土地選びのときにそういうメリットを勘案していましたが、人生時間でもっとも長い時間を経過してきて、こういうメリットはやはり大きかったと再認識しています。わが家前の中学校はかなりの人口密集地域の中学校として生徒数も高い水準で推移しているようだし、今後の人口減少局面でも、こういうメリットの存続可能性は高いのではないかと、カンを働かせています。
　こういう集中除排雪が継続的に行われることから、自ずとそのことを前提にした自宅敷地＆自宅前道路「雪かき」行為の計画性が担保されるように思う。
　札幌暮らしがながい人間からすると、このやむを得ない雪との「対話」、それも11月くらいから4月くらいまでの半年に及ぶ期間の雪かき計画期間というのは、もっとも主要な外部環境との関わり。関東以南地域での「庭仕事」以上に、自然との「対話」機会だと思うようになってきました。いわゆる伝統的日本美意識の花鳥風月とは乖離した独自の自然対話感覚。
　わが家では、狭めの敷地の平面部分にはロードヒーティングを敷設して表面にはレンガを敷いて、造園ではない庭としてきました。職住一体型住宅としては、わかりやすいコンセプト。最初はロードヒーティングをよく使っていたのですが、しかし札幌は年間積雪が5mを超える多雪都市。＜図は2/11AM9:00現在のことしの年間降雪量データですでに70%程度で推移＞　このような世界でも奇跡的な多雪大都市なので、融雪地面と非融雪地面の「高低差」がハンパなく発生する。厳冬期３ヶ月程度は、その高低差に悩むことになる。そこで敷設したロードヒーティングは数年で中止。まぁ、こういう用途に化石燃料を使うことにためらいが感じられるようになってもいた。
　以降、ほぼ30年以上は前面道路を含めての雪かきを自分自身に課してきた。比較的健康体で人生を過ごしてきたのには、こういう条件設定も大きかったかも知れません。今後の高齢期については、健康面との兼ね合いで考えて行くことになりますね。オモシロい課題。


English version⬇

[After the Snow Festival, it's spring... or is it?
For the people of Hokkaido, the dialogue with snow is an earnest feeling of the flower, bird and wind seasons. A huge divergence from the traditional Nippon ‘mono no aware’ warm-weather sensibility. Shin Kacho Fugetsu? ...

　Yesterday was a mid-week public holiday. The mid-week Monday schedule was a bit of a challenge, and I was not feeling very happy about the holiday. When I was in this mood, a group of snow clearing vehicles were out on the road in front of our house.
　The road in front of our house has a high priority in snow removal work because it is a ‘junior high school route’, and of course the frequency is high. We took these advantages into account when we chose the land, and now that we have lived here for the longest time in our lives, we realise that these advantages were still significant. The junior high school in front of our house seems to have a high number of students as a junior high school in a densely populated area, and I have a hunch that these advantages have a high chance of surviving even in the future when the population is declining.
　The fact that this kind of intensive snow removal is carried out on a continuous basis seems to naturally guarantee the planning of the act of ‘snow shoveling’ the home site & the road in front of the home on that basis.
　For those of us who have lived in Sapporo for a long time, this unavoidable ‘dialogue’ with the snow, and the planning period for snow shoveling, which extends over a period of six months from November to April, is the most important relationship with the external environment. I have come to think that this is an opportunity to ‘dialogue’ with nature even more than ‘garden work’ in the Kanto region and southwards. A unique sense of dialogue with nature that diverges from the so-called traditional Japanese aesthetic of Kacho Fugetsu.
　In our house, we have laid road heating and bricks on the surface of the flat part of the narrow plot, making it a non-landscaped garden. This is a straightforward concept for a house with an integrated work/residential area. At first, road heating was often used, however, Sapporo is a city with heavy snowfall, with an annual snowfall of more than 5m. <The figure is already at around 70% of the annual snowfall data for this year as of 9:00AM 11 Feb> As this is such a miraculously snowy metropolis in the world, the ‘height difference’ between the snow-melting ground and the non-snow-melting ground occurs without a hump. For about three months during the severe winter season, the difference in height is a problem. The road heating system installed there was discontinued after a few years. Well, we also began to feel hesitant about using fossil fuels for this kind of application.
　Since then, I have been obliged to shovel snow myself, including on the front road, for almost 30 years or more. This kind of conditioning may have been a big part of the reason why I have spent my life in relatively good health. I will have to think about my future old age in combination with my health. An interesting challenge.