At last, winter comes to Vermont
Finally, we’re having a proper Vermont winter.
In contrast, two Februarys ago, I was walking on bare trails in the woods. A year ago, Mark and I were playing pickleball outside almost every weekend.
The mild weather was, as I’m sure you’d agree, a nightmare.
I’ll concede that the past few winters, lacking the constant physical discomfort of a typical northern winter, made life easy. Pleasant, even. But that’s not the deal.
“We stocked up on staples as if 10 inches of snow might cut us off from civilization for weeks rather than just force us to drive a little slower in the morning.”
My Vermont residency agreement specifically stated that I would be cooped up inside and inconvenienced by bitter weather for up to six months each year. I don’t want to sound litigious, but have you ever heard the phrase “breach of contract”?
Luckily, this year was different from the start. We got seasonably chilly temperatures, a couple inches of snow every few days, and a rare white Christmas. We were having the kind of winter that non-Vermonters picture when they think of Vermont: snowy enough to look pretty but not so threatening as to make people gas up their generators.
It was better than nothing.
Then one morning a few weeks ago, I heard a plow scudding by at around 4 a.m. That sound, 50 years later, still gives me a surge of childhood joy. Snow day!
Now we were getting somewhere.
Last week, I noticed a strange energy among my coworkers and fellow grocery shoppers, an edge I traced to the weather alerts we were all receiving. The National Weather Service had issued an actual winter storm watch for the weekend.
Word spread quickly as we compared forecasts and predictions. Would we get a foot of snow? More? Would there be a damaging ice storm? We spoke in serious tones, but our twinkling eyes revealed our secret giddiness.
Friday, when the storm watch got upgraded to a warning, it was all we could do not to jump around and squeal like contestants on The Price Is Right. We stocked up on staples as if 10 inches of snow might cut us off from civilization for weeks rather than just force us to drive a little slower in the morning.
Establishments that would normally be open on Sunday closed preemptively. Events got rescheduled. People cancelled their plans. This was it: winter as it was meant to be.
When Mark and I woke up Sunday, we found ourselves snowed in (just until the plow truck came through, but still). We huddled by the wood stove as if it were our key to survival. I knitted and waited, with no luck, for the lights to flicker.
This was what we had been waiting for.
Monday, life returned to normal, although the snow made every chore, from feeding the chickens to bringing in the mail, a slog.
The fun was wearing off.
During the 20 minutes it took me to clean off my car, my mood soured. My winter boots, which had apparently renounced their waterproof properties sometime over the summer, soaked up snow that turned to ice water between my toes, flash-freezing them.
I had to climb over snowbanks and through drifts to reach the roof of the car. I winced as I banged the ice off the windshield wipers; my winter hangnails and dry, cracked cuticles felt the pain of every strike. When I brushed off the car roof, gusts of snow blew back in my face and down my neck.
As I scraped the icy windows, my resentment of the weather grew. I thought wistfully of the days of summer when the only labor required for a drive into town was to slip on a pair of sandals.
The final blow to my equanimity came when the head of the long-handled snow brush unscrewed itself mid-sweep and flew over the car into the deep snow. “Great,” I said (only I used a different word, repeatedly).
I tromped around the car and reached into the bank to retrieve the brush head. In the process, a generous helping of snow slipped into the space between my cuff and mitten, causing the dermal equivalent of a brain freeze on the inside of my wrist.
I roared wordlessly in frustration and despair. In that moment, I hated everything.
And then I smiled—not in spite of my misery but because of it.
This, I reminded myself, is how a proper Vermont winter is supposed to feel.
✦ ✦ ✦
(Originally published in the Addison Independent February 2025)
