I’m Worried About the Snow

It’s twice now I’ve tried to explain to Laura that I’m worried about the snow. “What if we didn’t go far enough North? What if we don’t get enough snow?” I’m not sure she’s too concerned about how much snow we’ll get and I’m sure she knows I’m being facetious. It’s just that the snow has changed the landscape so much. Even though we haven’t been here more than a handful of weeks, I think I’m becoming attached to it. Things just look better when the ground is white.

We had to run out again to get some food from the store today. I cleaned the ice off the cars for at least an hour. To heat the windows up, I had the cars running the whole time I was cleaning them. You should have seen me – lightly punching the hoods and the roofs – just enough to shake things loose. When I’d hear things get a little hollow, I’d know I had broken the connection between the ice and the paint. I’d give the whole ordeal a great swipe with my sleeve and everything would fall to the ground. And I did this all while wearing my little rubber shoes. My feet were cold and wet when I was finished.

While we were out, Laura was able to take a whole lot of pictures. The trees are still completely coated with ice. There were spots we had to pull over just to get a good look. Clouds directly overhead, ending straight ahead of us allowing the sun in. It was like a band of blue skies between the cloud cover and mountains. All that with that bright sun. It made the trees look – well it made them look rare, if that makes sense. There’s only so many times I’ll probably see that combination of instances in my life.

I think we’re down to about eight inches of compressed and very icy snow now. We had almost a foot, then it rained and formed an ice layer, twice, and then it snowed about an inch on top of that.

We’re starting to see snowmobile trails all over the place. There are markers out in the middle of fields, little stop signs near the roads and today I even saw one of the trails named, “Memorial Trail…” I’m not sure of the rest, but I liked the fact that snowmobiles are respected and allowed to be ridden in this part of the world. Remember, Maine has over 14,000 miles of very legal snowmobile/ATV trails and actually encourages their use. To me, that’s amazing. We even took a walk up our very own road just a few days ago to find two trails with snowmobile tracks in them. I came back to look on the computer for some information on where they went. Let’s just say they went up into no man’s land. Basically, you can get anywhere on a snowmobile from just a mile away from where I sleep at night. Amazing again.

Here’s one last shot for you. It’s from our way back to the house this afternoon. Merry Christmas everyone!