Currently 2° F with tall naked trees waving back and forth, ham radio antenna wires bouncing above a small snow-hardened yard. It’s mid March—will this go on much longer? Below are some notes from mid March eight years ago.

Ten, twelve years ago I self-identified as old. Not one old person mocked me for this. Perhaps they extended courtesy because they were woke. I’m not sure. Anyway I ended up writing a metaphorictype series of entries, eventually compiling them in a book. A theme, aside from winter, was my trending into old age―old age as the Big Winter. The title is Maine in Winter. It is part of a series comprised in four creative nonfiction books, called Maine Metaphor.  There is no fiction in these books.

Until now.

March 3, 2021

Dear Lynn, 

I thought to try writing a letter since the power is out. Very high wind yesterday with 40,000 Maine household power outages. Very cold weather, temps sank from 1 to 0° on waking, but the power on our road (about 16 houses) withstood until 10 a.m. Trees were knocking down powerlines. Woodlands here are full of trees old and new, rotting and strong. Fortunately — blessedly  — we borrowed for a generator recently, highly useful when outages happen any season, as they do here.

Mar. 5th, 2012 at 11:44 AM

Odd winter. Only just lately getting enough snow in these Maine mountains to make shoeing worthwhile. My trek begins here, on a steep but defined path.

 February 28, 2013
The days are longer; still, cabin fever persists. We live in the mountains of Western Maine where snowfall is plentiful and deep, occasionally yet falling.
Snowshoeing this a.m. passed neighbors,’ up and beyond. We have followed deer tracks in deep snow, and they have followed our snowshoe trails. They move in twilight hours. We are invisible, so are they. Theirs is a stronger scent than ours yet they smell us better than we do them. 

Sunday, February 17, 2008

At the town garage, Bethel, getting sand for our steps. Allen is shoveling.
We snowshoe to check roof condition—not that good—maybe 3 ft. the top part—but the snow is ice inches deep, not safe going. Allen broke it for me but we could not get over the walls of Jericho below. The deck is so deep he has to cut steps in it.

Here’s our deck with charcoal fire for grilling, a picture taken on Sunday. As you can see… showing conditions much better for snowshoeing than what is depicted in the post below. An entry from about 12 years ago in my journal.

Currently listening to The Last Chronicles of Barchester on the I-pod, an antique mechanism that is no longer made by Apple. Went down every Digital Aisle looking for new I-pods, found nothing but old ones refurbished. Then one day I came across the lifetime-warranty portable CD player distributed by Monodeal. If fully charged, it’ll long play during power outages. It’s elegant and well-made, and in its advertisement shows a fun video of its easy operation. I also bought a stack of recordable CDs to burn my own audio books. And began listening to the Last Chronicles on the player. Then I noticed a “Zits” comic in which Jeremy’s father was happily going out to exercise listening to music on his portable CD player (his teenager son mocking him). This was fun! In part because I love the funny papers, love virtually every character on that page in the regional rag.