Spring Swing

It’s that time of year when I turn the defroster on in the car in the morning and shift to the AC in the afternoon. The snowpack is receding to reveal green shoots of crocuses and daffodils pushing through half-frozen dirt. And the chickadees are singing longer and louder, with other birds adding their voices to the soundscape outside.

Ah, springtime. Just a friendly reminder, though, that we’re likely in for more winter before spring really sets in.

It’s a rare – maybe nonexistent – occurrence that one New England season simple ends and the next slides smoothly into place. I’m guessing there will be some more give and take between winter and spring – more cold wind, more blowing snow, more bundling up into layers – before the warmer, greener season really takes hold. But the transformation has begun.

Last week, the Connecticut River, where I cross over it from Thetford into Lyme on my way to the office, was a wide, smooth swath of silver-white. This week it’s melted out to a sleek ribbon of cold slate. Where snow covered the perennial bed just a few days ago, now the newly-exposed leaves are greening in the March sunshine, a first step toward summer blooms. Sap buckets hang from sugar maples, and the dog has taken her first dip of the year in an ice-free Bowen Brook.

The kids and I spent all of last weekend at ski races, where the spectators basked in the warm temperatures, and freckles sprouted on noses and cheeks. After school early this week, the kids changed into shorts and headed into the yard with a soccer ball. And so we find ourselves, again, in an in-between place, where mud and snow mingle in the yard, and ski boots and snow pants share space with flipflops and cleats near the front door.

This transitionary time is not always pretty. Tired snowbanks are melting away to reveal a winter’s worth of detritus. (And each year, I wonder who on earth drinks so many cans of bad beer before tossing the empties out the window.) Frost heaves mar the backroads I travel. People and pup track mud everywhere. Without a blanket of white, and before the pastel hues of spring paint the landscape, the most common color there could be considered “blah brown.”

But there is a hopeful sweetness to this shifting of seasons, too. I’m anticipating more days of sweet spring skiing peppering the earliest weeks of soccer practice. I’m starting to think about the garden and which vegetables to grow (or try to, at least) this year. And I wholeheartedly welcome the light of lengthening days.

There is still some snow to come, I’m sure, and cold. At some point, probably soon, I’ll have to don the extra layers again, at least for a while. But these sunny March days are a reminder that spring is on its way, meandering though it may be.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay was published in the Littleton Record as Meghan's Close to Home column on March 13, 2020.

Transitioning

These last few weeks, I’ve felt a bit like the tiny crocuses outside the living room window –  alternately basking in the warm spring sunshine and huddling against the stubborn winter cold. My first peek out the window in the morning now is as likely to reveal a giant flock of robins hopping around the yard like an army of wind-up toys as it is a fresh coating of snow.

During these transitional days, I am often as indecisive as the seasons, still enjoying winter’s last thrills, even as I look forward to and prepare for spring – whenever it might arrive.

On those warm-sun days, if I have the time, I weigh the options – an outing with the dog or one more trip to the ski hill for fast turns down quiet groomers?

When the day warrants time only for a quick outing, I’ve traded in forays through the forest by cross-country ski for slow runs on backroad routes I haven’t traveled much since November. I try to identify the birdsong floating through a landscape that was recently winter-quiet and to remember where I usually spot the first wildflowers – often escaped from some long-ago garden.

On longer treks, when the sun beckons the dog and I to climb higher on still-snowy trails, I can’t help but think ahead to summer adventures. Which tall peaks, now still blanketed in snow, will we hike during the green months?

The kids have had their bikes out the last few weeks, as the afternoons stretch longer between school ending and the sun setting. They ride over mud and snow, skid out on the ice, remember the exhilaration of flying downhill on something other than skis – and think about summer rides to come.

The ski gear is still out, in case we are inspired for one more day on the slopes. The ski boots by the big radiator near the front door join a jumble of muck boots and sneakers, flipflops and soccer cleats – any of them potentially required on any given day now.

We’ve lugged the sleds and snowshoes back into the garage, but haven’t yet hauled them upstairs to their warm-weather storage, lest there’s one more good snowstorm that merits their use before spring really settles in. Experience tells us that snowstorm could come as late as Memorial Day – or not again until next fall.

Some days I am impatient for the seasons to get on with their shuffle, for sunshine to prevail over lingering flurries. On other days, I remind myself any snowflakes falling now won’t last long in the strengthening light and lengthening days.

This, the dog knows – or, more likely, she just doesn’t care. She takes pleasure in whatever she finds, running gleefully along dirty roads, traipsing through puddles and scampering hopelessly after the chittering red squirrels. She stares intently through the windows at the newly arrived birds hopping around the yard. She laps happily in the recently-thawed stream near our driveway, trots mindlessly through the mud, and then – as if it’s the best thing in the world – rolls gleefully in any big-enough patch of snow she can find.

Perhaps she remembers that snow will soon disappear. Spring is coming. Next week, maybe, or the week after that. Whenever it gets here, we’ll be ready.

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 April 13, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

What happened to Winter?

The driveway this winter has progressed through a somewhat regular and recurring rotation of fresh snow, slushy post-rain puddles, and the thick ice that forms when temps drop from well above freezing to well below. There is no consistency to winter anymore, it seems.

Missing snowier days...

We survived the deep freeze of Christmas week, whose brutal cold sapped our energy and made our fingers and toes ache. By the end of those two frigid weeks, even the most outdoor-loving of my outdoor-loving kids was content to stay inside when he could.

The January Thaw came twice – both the week before my birthday and the week after. I don’t remember all the specific weather details, but somewhere in there, between the rain and thawing, it snowed enough that we had to shovel the roof, brush off the car, and plow the driveway several times.

The first week of February, I let my kids skip school one day to ski a foot of new powder. When I tossed that idea out to my husband, feeling a bit guilty about the missing-school part, he was immediately on board (although, sadly, he still had to go to work). We only get so many powder days in a winter – or a lifetime – after all. The kids dragged me through every puffy-with-new-snow glade they could find, and we stayed out well into the afternoon.

I guess it was good we had that day, because this Tuesday I wore my rain pants and muck boots to the mountain for my coaching gig. Out of a small vacation week group, I had only two intrepid 7-year-olds join me for a morning of slushy-icy runs and wet chairlift rides. As we went in for our mid-morning break, I wrung the water out of my sopping mittens.

The kids didn’t seem to mind. They chatted happily on the chairlift, practiced the rainy day drills I assigned them, and skimmed cheerfully through slushy puddles to get from one place to the next.

The last three years, we’ve had similarly wacky winter weather during the two weeks of February break that are traditionally the busiest ski weeks of the season. Last year, for the first week, when out-of-state skiers are on vacation, we had fresh snow and beautiful weather. The New Hampshire kids got rain and ice the following week, but they didn’t batt an annoyed eyelash.

I have a photograph, somewhere, of my crew from two years ago standing in a deep puddle at the top of a chairlift. They gleefully slid through that puddle – and another one at the bottom of another lift – every run that day.

I’m glad the kids go with the flow, and I try to match their enthusiasm for skiing in the rain. But maybe they don’t mind because it’s such a regular occurrence in their young skiing lives.

I can remember only a handful of rainy ski days in my entire childhood. Tuesday one of the other coaches, a guy who’s on the hill six days a week, said it was his eleventh day this season skiing in the rain. Rain ponchos and serious rain pants – like the kind fishermen wear – have been added to many a ski coach’s wardrobe.

My own kids, like the good New Englanders they are, will ski in just about any kind of weather: howling wind, 40 below, sleet, snow, ice, sunshine. But like me, they are dismayed by the recurring winter thaws that no longer stick to a few days of January.

“This is sad,” my 9-year-old proclaimed Wednesday morning, as she exited the house jacketless and looked out on the snow-less field and the mud bog of our driveway.

All I could do was agree – and hope for another swing toward winter before spring sets in for good.

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 23, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

January Thaw

For about three years running when I was a kid, I wanted to have an ice-skating party for my birthday, which falls this month. Each year, winter would start off all frosty and lovely. The ice would freeze smooth on the pond just down the road. The invitations would go out. And then the January Thaw would arrive, just in time to turn the pond to slush and ruin my plans.

Drip...drip...drip...

This year, winter has started off with a combination of lots of fluffy snow and brutally cold days. Several days over the holiday vacation week, I felt as if I were wearing a corset as I zipped into my coach’s jacket, so tightly packed were the layers of polypro and down beneath.

So when I snuck out for a few runs early this week, it was blissful to ski without being hunched up against the cold and wearing so many layers that I could barely move. Those runs were beautiful. A bit of fresh, soft snow, great cover on all the trails, and a temperature right around freezing.

That moment of bliss, I’m afraid, preceded this year’s January Thaw.

As I write this column, it is still solidly winter. The trees are dressed in lacy white. The field is fully covered. The mountain peaks at the edge of my view are snowy. But the forecast looks warm and wet for the end of the week. By the time anyone reads this column, we’ll know how bad it is. I won’t even utter that four-letter word that begins with R; it’s dirtier than the mud it causes. Alas, I’m afraid it’s coming.

The January Thaw is a bit of an ambiguous concept. There’s no exact date for the dreaded phenomenon, and some years it doesn’t even happen – or it comes in December or February or, the worst, multiple times over the course of a winter. The Farmer’s Almanac, that bastion of long-range weather prediction that meteorologists urge us not to believe because the science is vague, or, perhaps, non-existent, describes The Thaw thusly:

“Small ‘blips’ in the overall pattern reveal noticeable fluctuations that can be observed from year to year. These blips are called singularities in weather lingo. Indian Summer, a period of unseasonably warm weather that usually appears in mid-October, is one such blip. The January Thaw is another.”

I will say that I much prefer the other singularity – Indian Summer – to this one. The Almanac goes on to say the January Thaw typically sees temperatures an average of 10 degrees higher than the previous week. Well, this is one heck of a thaw. By week’s end, temps are forecast to be in the mid-40s – above zero. That’s about a 70-degree change from a week prior!

If I can find any solace in this weather “blip,” it is that it will be brief – and in the fact that it has been happening (though perhaps not as dramatically) for far longer than I have been lamenting it.

Some years ago, my mother gave the kids a book called “Ollie’s Ski Trip,” written in 1907 by Swedish author Elsa Beskow. Young Ollie loves winter – and snow, skating, sledding, skiing – and is thrilled to meet Jack Frost, but dismayed by the occasional early arrival of winter’s “cleaning lady,” Mrs. Thaw, who forgets when she is supposed to set to work and sometimes tries to melt Jack Frost’s handiwork before spring arrives.

Whenever Ollie noticed hints that Mrs. Thaw was at work, he’d chant, “Mrs. Thaw, Mrs. Thaw, Please don’t sweep our snow away! Come again some other day!”

If only it were so easy to control the weather. Here’s hoping Jack Frost follows close on Mrs. Thaw’s heals this January, and there’s plenty of winter still to come.

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 January 12, 2018 issue of the Littleton Record.

Steering through mud season

A friend remarked recently that he’s encountered “frost heaves deep enough to swallow a Hybrid” on local roads. By necessity, I drive a minivan, which is significantly harder to consume than a Prius. But that’s a great bit of imagery, and I think any of us who travels the roads this time of year can relate to the challenge of steering through the potholes and frost heaves of spring, or, as we so fondly call it, Mud Season.

My own road, which turns from rough pavement to narrow dirt one sharp turn before our driveway, is worse this year than I’ve ever seen it. The paved – and I use that term loosely, for there’s more sand and crumbling than pavement at this point – section of the road has decayed to a series of kitchen sink- and bathtub-sized potholes that fill with water and connect to form a virtual minefield for drivers. I’ve accepted that it takes an extra few minutes now to maneuver the half-mile from our house to the state highway at the end of our road.

Even that highway is no guaranteed easy travel route. A few weeks back we had to go the long – and bumpy – route home after a sinkhole large enough to swallow a minivan opened up in the middle of the road. The highway crew got in there and patched it up quickly, but there’s now a wide strip of gravel the breadth of the road where there should be pavement.

Going down the hill from home is out of the question for me. My husband likes the challenge of steering through slippery, gooey troughs of mud bordered on each side by ditches that are easily deep enough to swallow a hybrid or a minivan. But he drives a pickup these days and has the option of 4-wheel drive. I, on the other hand, chauffeur a gaggle of sometimes-rowdy children in a front-wheel drive minivan. I’m leaving the snow tires on until after mud season; I figure I need all the extra traction I can get.

The muddy ruts act like a vortex, sucking cars in so that there’s no exit until the ruts peter out to washboarded gravel. Last year the town road crew, in an effort to make the road passable in mud season, dropped a load of large stones on the two worst sections of the road, which happened to be directly above and just below our driveway. The stones filled in the ruts, alright, but made for an excruciatingly jarring drive. I can’t imagine it was much fun for the guys who dropped them there, either, as they had to dig the stones out to grade the road a month later.

The other morning we woke to a fresh layer of spring snow, just enough white to provide a superficial cover on the road and turn that half-mile stretch into a game of memory: zig hard here, zag gently there, watch out for the dip straight ahead. At least on the road to my daughter’s preschool the frost heaves are obvious. Forget hybrids, these monsters look as if they’ve swallowed a VW bus. The swollen pavement lurches to the right, then swoops to the left – right through a pothole, of course.

I keep thinking I ought to wash my car, but what would be the point? It would just get covered in mud again the next time I left the driveway. Our house is currently surrounded by a mud moat. The kids don’t seem to mind. They’ve hauled the sandbox toys out of the garage and gone to work digging through the top layer of sand – the bottom is still frozen solid. To get to the sandbox – or the garage – they have to traipse through muddy puddles. To get anywhere, they have to traipse through muddy puddles.

And so the house is filled with muddy snow boots, muddy muck boots, muddy snow pants and jackets, and muddy paw prints from the dog. Ah, well. It’s mud season, that time of year where the weather is anything but predictable, and we’re guaranteed our fair share of bumps in the road. Just get out the hose and the broom and make mud pies. After all, black fly and tick season will be here soon enough.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the April 5, 2013 edition of the Record Littleton.