Snowy Fields

Ah, over two feet of snow in New England.

I'm reminded of the days forty years ago when I lived in Maine.  I loved it, despite living in shacks that let the cold wind in like sieves, when ten or more blankets at night weren't enough at times.

The pronounced seasons were wonderful, and a big snowfall always excited me as much as autumn's colors or a summer on the beach.  I liked walking through my neighborhoods in Augusta, Waterville and Portland after a big storm.

I loved the sound of walking on snow.

I recall riding daily to Augusta from Portland with a legislator who drove faster in the stuff than I would have liked, but he was expert, talking and driving without concern, controlling the elements rather than being intimidated by them as happens in places unaccustomed to snow.

Later, I would take my own clunker to the back roads and test my new awareness of how to drive in the stuff.

At night, I enjoyed a nip of a warm drink, something with coffee in it, from the vantage of a large window in a warm pub.

Even the sight of warm exhaust spewing from a tailpipe, mingling with the cold air, gave me pleasure, a ghastly thing to admit in the age of global warming.

Then, as now, I wasn't as much concerned with commerce as I was with the hopefulness of a clean, white snow-pack that did not turn ugly until day three, or not at all if the storms came through in succession and you might drive into the country to have a closeup view of the snowy landscape.

For the most part, life was routine after a storm anyway.

I enjoyed lolling in bed with Lyn or Mary, the two women whose company I most enjoyed in those days, older women who knew how to take care of a shivering younger man from Oregon.

I liked the sound of snowplows gearing up at dawn.

I'd still be there, but I got homesick for this place, this Portland that almost called itself Boston when the founding fathers couldn't make up their minds.

I wonder how life would have unfolded had I stayed there?

I've said it before, I might go back there (but probably not) to live out my days.  Dying in a snowdrift might be better than a lot of the alternatives a man faces.

Coffee, Irish Whiskey, and a walk home becoming the perfect delirium...the solution.


TS