WAITING FOR BOREAS
The Isolation Blues;
reflections during covid-19
January can be a brutal month in the north woods as temperatures can plummet to minus numbers for days and snow can bury you deep. Anyone who has lived a couple of snow seasons in Maine has stories to tell and weather-related calamities to share. Thus far, we’ve had a mostly uneventful start to the winter of ’22 with modest snowfall amounts (20 inches) and a couple of minus 15 temps just to get our attention. I came across an old journal entry from January, 2002 that I’m sharing in today’s backwoods blog post where it looks like I was getting a little impatient for winter to kick into gear. Since then I’ve backed off a bit (perhaps) and I’m just fine with manageable and less dramatic winter conditions. Please share your own “snow-stories” in the comments section.
Journal entry; “Waiting for Boreas" January 3, 2002 I am sitting here at the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee well within my reach feeling impatient and perturbed, I might add, that the snows have not arrived in this north country. They say on the radio that this was the warmest December on record of the last 125 years in Mane - nothing even close to dipping below zero on the thermometer before the start of the new year. I don’t view these as particularly good indicators, for a guy like myself, who likes it as cold as it can get with snow to boot! I dug out my 16 inch Bean boots the other day and oiled the uppers, but it would feel odd walking around town in these on bare sidewalks such as it is. Perhaps I should wear them anyways as a provocation to the Greek God of the north winds himself. To flaunt my traditional apparel of tall boots and wool pants in the face of Boreas as he gives me a good looking over; leaning on my winter’s stock of split and stacked firewood, confident of my 80 year-old stove’s output. I taunt the gods to give me their worst and I will gladly take it. This is one of the reasons I live here, figuring Houlton should be far enough north to ensure the rigors of a severe winter. I must confess, that it is convenient to still be driving into the cabin this time of year, but I would quickly trade it for a couple feet of snow and the extra work that it brings. But Boreas doesn’t make deals, and it appears that he is testing my forbearance and exposing my “snow-lust” tendencies for what they are. None-the-less, my skis and snowshoes stand ready, my shovel on the wings, waiting for Boreas, waiting in this early January for the coming snows...
In the woods,
Dave
January 14, 2022
Your “Bridge Over (Un)Troubled Waters” looks better to me in its winter coat than in its summer version. I have always thought that one of the best things about living in The County is that simply surviving is an accomplishment. Never is that more true than in winter. On my first trip to Houlton, to visit my betrothed, circa 1971, perhaps in February, it was 40 below the evening I arrived and 30 above the next day, a remarkable 70 degree Fahrenheit swing. Sure, the road crews are all experienced and do a great job of keeping the roads mostly free of snow. But after marriage and moving to Houlton for good, my job took me weekly to Caribou and Fort Kent. Going up 1A through Fort Fairfield, it was common for the plowed drifts on the west side of the road to be as high as the telephone wires. And it was also common, on the ride home in the dark, to have to crash through some new drifting or fly blind through white-outs. It was not uncommon for overnight temps to hit 30 or 40 below. And I agree with the 2002 David, that I looked forward to the challenge that weather presented: creating a path to the car, getting the car to start, shoveling and scooping enough to get out of the driveway and to work on time. I was at camp last week and had to put my plow and chains onto the Ranger in single-digit temperatures. Back in South Portland, I am still nursing a frost-bitten index finger tip received when I had to un-glove to hook the chain. It just can’t be done with gloves. But it is simply one more thing to remind me of winter in The County while the rain today takes away the Southern Maine snow.