The prospect of going south for a week in mid February seems a treat for those of us living in Montana.  Hence, I was pleased to accept invitations to speak at NCCU and Duke Universities. It had been -30ºF with much snow, nothing unusual, before we left.  We have seen much colder.  We looked forward to a week in North Carolina's Research Triangle.

Back in the 1980s Ramona and I had fed 500 pregnant ewes when it hit -45, a near record for the Gallatin valley.  At -30, people just blinked and adjusted.   We recall MSU shutting down just once in the past 40 years. Appropriate experience and equipment enable people to cope with snow and cold with few problems.  This logic applies when expectations are disrupted.

We arrived in NC and checked into our hotel.  Then, a day before my first talk I received two emails.  They were identical in substance.  The university may be canceled; snow is expected.  And snow came.  The universities closed.  My talks were canceled.  Amazingly to us, this was the prudent decision.

We were having lunch with Matthew Gilliland, our host from the Federalist Society of NCCU's Law School. Appropriately, we were at Ted's Montana Grill in South Gate Mall on Fayetteville Street in Durham.  (It's nearly as good as Bozeman's.)  Midway through lunch the waitress came back to our table and told us the restaurant was closing and had locked the doors.  Why? Snow had started.

In Montana, it would be a typical spring snow, wet and heavy. Nothing special. But here, the results sure were.  We finished our lunch and tried to return to our hotel.  It took a while, a long while. Traffic was locked. It took an hour to travel half a mile. 

It is not that North Carolinians can't drive and don't care about cars.  In one of the best three essays I've read (all by the same person), Tom Wolfe's "Junior Johnson: Last American Hero" (Esquire, March 1965), Wolfe describes North Carolina's fascination with autos: "We are all in the middle of a wild new thing, the Southern car world... Junior Johnson is a modern hero, all involved with car culture and car symbolism in the South."

No, it's not that cars are alien machines. Southerners simply are not experienced and are not equipped for driving on snow.  People learn. In Montana, many people, in addition to snow tires and window scrapers, carry warm clothing, food, shovels, tow straps, and general survival gear. It's that simple. 

Ramona and I waited out the storm for a few hours, looked at the web's real time shots of traffic on I-40 E, and headed for our hotel.  We passed dozens, no, scores of cars and trucks off the road.  Some were abandoned for two days; people were terrified to drive in these conditions.  Aside from worries about other drivers' problems staying on the road, we were quite comfortable.

This was a learning experience.  We had seen TV accounts of Atlanta's polarization when snow hit there some few weeks earlier.  Now we experienced it.

A February event that would be celebrated in Montana, four inches of snow and temperature in the mid 20s ABOVE zero, paralyzes North Carolina. What might we generalize from the contrast between North Carolinians and Montanans response to cold and snow?  

Here are some answers: When people encounter adverse conditions, their history, culture, machines and tools matter a great deal.  When an event is a rare occurrence, significant snowfall twice a decade, only a few are ready for it.  Preparation isn't free. 

It is easy to understand this when dealing with cold, ice, and snow.  What about other disturbances out of the ordinary and hence unexpected?  How might people respond to earthquakes, prolonged power outages, terrorists’ attacks, fiscal break down, or civil unrest?  It is impossible to predict any of these with precision.  One thing is certain, wealth fosters resiliency.  Here’s another, we will have an economic shock. We just don’t know when.

I appreciate my invitations to talk and present a paper at North Carolina universities.  Although the universities closed and I didn't receive the benefits of comments, I enjoyed writing about conserving things we value.  It is linked to at the bottom of today's FREE Insight.

I expect this paper to become a book chapter and part of some new web venture.  Should you become snowed in, an extremely rare event around Bozeman, and look for something constructive to do, I'd welcome your extension to other topics.  The theme is broad and likely to become relevant: How might we preserve things we value if government capabilities weaken -- or become broke and broken.

Please click here to read my recent paper, "Experiments in Ecology & Economics".