On Snowmageddon and Marshmallow Fluff

If I have to choose between scary and awe, I'll take awe.

I took this picture at around 11:30 AM today. The shadows are still long, even close to noon. The days are still short. The icicles tell me there’s too much heat escaping up there. But I’m cozy inside and it looks beautiful to me. At the moment.

I’ve lost count, and someone may come along to correct me, but I’m going to say it has snowed for four days straight up here in my corner of The North Country. The wind blew almost the entire time and the drifts grew, so it’s hard to say how much snow fell, but a safe estimate is well over a foot.

Right now the sun is shining and the air is quiet and it looks placid and fluffy and beautiful. Yesterday the wind gusts produced mini-blizzards up and down and across the bay as the snow flew off the cedars and over the mounds and did those swirling dances that, I’m sorry, thrilled the heck out of me.

We Up Northers tend to want to exaggerate the impact of snow and ice and wind because 1) we have nothing else to do while it’s happening, or 2) we’ve battled the elements in what seems like a lost cause yet we’ve lived to tell about it and we’re damn well going to.

As you’ve already guessed, I’m in the Number One category. I haven’t been out of the house for more than a few minutes during this entire four-day period. Lucky for me I have big windows that look out onto that wintery landscape and are mostly clean enough for me to be able to take pictures through them.

To me, looking out, it’s a world of marshmallow fluff. To those who keep coming around to dig me out, I wouldn’t dare say that out loud. It’s hard enough. When I thank them they’d rather hear they’re my heroes getting me out of a jam than that they're helping to make this fun for me.

The truth is, I never minded shoveling snow when I could. During our almost 30 years here, Ed and I were snowbirds, leaving the island just before Christmas and returning after the snows had settled down, keeping to the deep woods until they finally melted off. But there were many years we were still here when those big snows fell, and besides the shovel, we made use of our snow-blower and that marvelous invention, the snow rake.

Ed pulling snow off of the roof. It was my job to shovel off the pile on the deck.

Ed with his snowblower. I’d like to say I helped him with it, but that blower had other plans. I think it tried to kill me.

Inside it’s cozy, though I have much to learn about survival skills. Two days ago I let my propane tank get to empty—for the second time in a little over a month. Checking the tank was always Ed’s job, so the first time it happened I had an excuse. I just didn’t think about it until the house began to get cold and no amount of turning up the thermostat would help. I thought at first it must be the furnace, but the furnace is new. It probably wasn’t likely. Then I thought about the propane. When had I last checked the tank? Well…never?

So I built a fire in the woodstove (okay, my neighbor did…) and the propane driver just happened to be on the island, so within a few hours I had furnace heat again.

But the other day wasn’t my fault! After that first embarrassing failure, I discovered the propane company has an app that will approximate the number of gallons left in the tank on any given day. I trusted the damn thing! It was off by 28 gallons. But luckily—again—it was the very day the propane driver was going to make a delivery here anyway, so the timing couldn’t have been better. He was here within a half hour of the last drops of propane sacrificing themselves in order to heat my house. I had already built a fire (by myself!) and it was 66 degrees inside when the furnace kicked on, while it was seven degrees outside, so not so bad! But I hope I’ve learned my lesson now.

It’s crazy that I’m trying to stay here in the winter. I’m old! I have no business trying to rough it when everyone around me has to worry that I might slip and fall or do something nuts because I’m supposed to be a snowbird, outta here when the snow flies. Safe from all of this. I know.

But I look out my windows—all of them because the views are different everywhere—and I see the most amazing sights. I throw out a carrot for a single doe and within minutes five others appear, looking for food. I love that!

I’m not trying to prove anything to myself. I just want to stay. And if it turns out that I can’t—if it gets to be too much—I’ll see it as a disappointment and not a failure. But right now, this is what I see as I write this looking out my window:

I’m staying as long as I can.

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