Winter Hardy

I’ve brushed a new layer of fluff off the windshield just about every morning for the past two weeks. My husband has taken to dropping the plow nearly each trip into or out of the driveway, scraping away the snow that has fallen since the truck’s last passage. I’ve lost track of the number of days that have started off with temperatures well below zero and barely warmed.

It’s Winter, all right, and it looks like she’s settled in, which is just fine by me.

It takes a good dose of New England hardiness to survive a winter like this. At least to survive it with some sense of good cheer. There is shoveling and roof clearing and endless plowing and firewood carrying. If you’re lucky (and smart) there is also skiing and snowshoeing and ice skating and sledding and snow fort building. My kids (and I, too) lamented the December rain and the loss of white from our landscape. Cold and brown is no good for a winter-loving soul. Cold and snow is an entirely different, and much happier, thing.

It seems while we head into the white looking for fun, many animals – the hardiest of New Englanders – have hunkered down since the deep snowfall. A few weeks ago our fields were laced with deer tracks and the hopping marks of red squirrels and the canine paw prints of coyotes, along with fox and the elusive bobcat. Lately, however, when I strap on the cross-country skis for a mind-clearing trek through the field and woods, I see far fewer tracks. A solitary deer trail emerging from the trees here, a snowshoe hare track bounding across the path there. The garden compost heap, which had been visited regularly by a bold doe, has been left alone for days, except by the crows.

On the coldest days, even the ever-cheery chickadees wait until well after I’ve had my own breakfast to visit the feeder. A pair of blue jays often sit puffed against the chill on bare branches nearby, their brightness almost startling against a backdrop of white. The other day a barred owl perched atop a dead birch tree in the field, head turning methodically in search of a meal, feathers ruffled by the wind. Eventually the owl gave up and flew away; there were no small rodents moving through the deep snow below.

The only animal who seems unbothered by the cold and deepening snow is the porcupine, whose trough-like trail through the woods crosses the human-made path of snowshoes and skis just where it has the past few winters. Scraping teeth marks appear like brush strokes across several smallish yellow birch trees along the trail, revealing where the porcupines ate the inner bark, a favorite winter meal.

I know there are plenty of people who hunker down, too, closed up in their warm houses waiting for spring through the long northern winter. And there are others whose children have had far too many snow days (while here we’ve had zero snow days and still plenty of snow), wreaking havoc on the already complicated logistics of family schedules. In Boston and other cities, they are running out of places to put all the snow; commuting is an ongoing nightmare, and this winter is a multifaceted headache there.

Here, it is just winter, to be endured or enjoyed, depending on your perspective. Sure, plowing and shoveling become tiresome when they are daily chores, but all that pushed-up snow makes a great foundation for a snow fort. Frigid temperatures can certainly wear a person down after a while, but that cold makes the cocoa all the better. Driving through snow is not much fun, but skiing in it is pure, invigorating bliss.

In mid-February, the days are noticeably longer than a few weeks ago. To some, that means spring is coming. To the rest of us, it means more daylight for basking in Winter’s white glow.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the February 13, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

More winter, please

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul

The Gale River rose this morning to nearly level with the road. Yesterday afternoon there were ice dams clogging the river along Route 18 in Franconia. The temperature was 53 degrees. On January 30. In New Hampshire.

This morning I dropped two kids at kindergarten and headed with the third to preschool, following the road that skirts the river from Franconia into Sugar Hill. The ice was cleared from the water, dog house-sized chunks of it lining the banks. The preschool is located in an old farm house, just across the road from the river. Three years ago, the low room of the preschool flooded. This morning it looked like it might again.

Within moments of our arrival, the water rose and its flow seemed to speed up. Huge blocks of ice churned along with the water. Soon we noticed sturdy tree branches and stumps carried downstream with the ice. The river seemed dangerously close to spilling its banks and creeping across the road.

This is about the third time this winter that wildly fluctuating temperatures have made the river freeze, then thaw. Normally we see ice dams only in the spring. This winter, it seems, we notice them almost weekly – clogging the river, then melting in a January heat wave and clearing out again.

In the past week we have seen temperatures drop to 20 degrees below zero and rise to more than 50 degrees above. Monday night it snowed nice, light, fluffy flakes that accumulated to a few inches. I’m happy I snuck out to ski Tuesday morning for a few runs, because yesterday it felt like April. Last night it poured. This morning the winter river rose to nearly flood level. This afternoon the wind is howling through the valleys, causing the tall white pines to dance precariously high above the ground, and pushing the cooling air through our old windows.

By tomorrow morning, the wind chill should bring the temperature back down to zero. It is supposed to snow. That sounds good to me. More winter, please. I’ll take my spring in April.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her Blog: Writings from a full life.