The following article appeared in the January 13,1916, issue of THE MAINE WOODS newspaper published in Phillip, Maine. At the time, the paper was the primary newspaper for North Franklin County. The author provides a quaint peek into what a long winter meant for rural folks in Maine. Today we often speak of how winter sometimes restricts us in social activity and movement as ‘cabin fever’ sets in. However just imagine what must have been like back then with few phones, sporadic mail, icy roads, and unreliable electric service. Folks just hunkered down with a full larder, a stocked root cellar and a pantry full of canned goods…and waited for Spring. It truly was a forced isolation, but they overcame by reading, enjoying what nature had to offer and each other. Hint; families got larger providing more help around the farm. They made the most of it. 

 This story brought back fond memories of 10-foot snow drifts and my brothers and I shoveling out and clearing roofs, sometimes for days. Those are great memories for this snow lover. 

 So as my old Mainer neighbor, Gordon, used to say about a pending Nor’easter…   

“Let’er come, We were heyah furst!”   

Enjoy the following and be sure to get outside and make some great Maine winter memories of your own!

Maine Snowstorm Has ’Em All Stopped 

 By Eva M. Brickett.  

“Quite a snowstorm we’re having,” remarked Henry Rogers, as he stood by the window of his friend’s louse, looking out upon the softly falling flakes, and a leaden sky. 

 “Nothing but a flurry,” answered Bill Atwood, comfortably seated by his morning fire in the living room, devouring the latest news with an after-breakfast interest. 

 “Well, it looks to me more like a blizzard than a flurry,” Henry ventured crisply, “notwithstanding your usual good judgment, Bill.”  

“Say, you come from Pennsylvania, don’t you Henry?” Bill said smiling.  

“Sure, what’s that got to do with snowstorms, I’d like to know”? 

 “Everything in the world. You Pennsylvania Dutchman have no idea what real snow really looks like. Like a true good old-fashioned Maine snowstorm. Let it sift down gently over this town for two or three days. Why they would have to dig you out with a snow plough.”  

Plowing snow in Rangeley. (Photo courtesy of the late Arthur Guerin)

Henry was already pulling up a chair to the warm glow of a bright fire, hoping that Bill had once again got going on one of his old-time yarns.  

“I remember when I was a boy that when mother called up from the back stairs in her gentle voice, ‘Come boys, it’s time to get up’, that’s when we always felt perfectly safe in just rolling over and stealing one more snooze before the 2nd gentle call would rouse us from our nap and we would slowly get into our clothes and shuffle down into the warm kitchen where an appetizing breakfast would still be warm on the back of the stove. Oh, how it tempted our hungry stomachs. I remember very distinctly however, that when an impatient deep bass voice yelled up those very same backstairs, Boys! Breakfast is ready!” Oh, how we would jump as we woke and piled out of bed in the twinkling of an eye for well we knew that there was probably 2 feet of snow outside and father expected us to get right on the job. The work was plenty to shovel the paths as quickly as possible, so the morning chores could begin. If there is a boy who has never known the back-aching experience of shoveling snow for a couple hours before breakfast, then he has missed a rare treat. Why Henry, we would often have to open the back door and start shoveling the snow from INSIDE on the kitchen floor before we could even get a start outside!” 

 “If the snow was light, then our work was easier, but if it was the heavy, the kind that packs down hard, well, we just had to puff and grunt and hurl the big masses to one side until, we had a respectable walking path to the barn, or the well house, or out to the road.” 

Shoveling snow. (Photo courtesy of the late Arthur Guerin)

“You didn’t need any gymnasium stunts to keep you boys in trim, those days, I take it, Bill?” Laughed Henry.  

“Not so you would notice it, old man. There was never any extra flesh on my bones at that time, and every time I stooped you could hear my joints creak. We boys loved the snow in spite of hard work. You couldn’t see anything but great drifts of snow for an endless distance. Not a sound broke the early morning air except the crowing of a stray rooster or two. No factory whistles, no cars or auto horns. Nothing but the intense silence everywhere. A silence that you could almost feel.” 

 “No beer trucks clattering over the pavements at six in the morning like we have down in Pennsylvania, eh, Bill?”  

“Nary a one, Henry. There might be a keg of sweet cider, setting round somewhere. One with a frozen sweetness to it, that would almost make it taste like nectar, but there was never any straight liquor in Father’s bouse. He was one of those grand old men who for so many years gave Maine a Prohibition reputation, known all over the country, and I wish there were more of strong and stern principled men now-a-days.” 

“Did you ever think what becomes of all the wild creatures, Bill, when such heavy snows fall all over the woods and pastures, making it almost impossible for any creature to move about to get food?”  

A man, Joe Handy perhaps, shoveling snow in Rangeley after a snowstorm. (Photo courtesy of the late Arthur Guerin)

“Of course, I’ve thought of it; any old hunter like me does not forget the wild creatures during the long cold months of winter, and Wise Nature has given them many a way to protect themselves from the cold, and to provide themselves with food. Do you know that wild creatures have a lot more real common sense than half our city folks? They have foresight too, and know when to look ahead to winter days, laying up their stock of food or hunting up a cozy burrow for their winter home. I used to like to wallow through the woods after the first deep snow fell and look for tracks. There is something fascinating about tracks, Henry. If you have any detective instinct in you, whatever you find brings great pleasure and interest in following up these woodland tracks in the snow. Perhaps a rabbit, a mink, a fox or a wildcat stealing forth from his lair to seek his prey. Little tracts or big, they tell every real hunter a story which he likes to read, and the ending of which he likes to find out for himself. Maybe, he will find a few scattered feathers. Perhaps a wad of soft fur or possibly within the steel jaws of a cruel trap the soft body of a wildcat. Mute evidence of the still life that goes on in the woods while men are sleeping. Snow is something like a blanket, after all. It’s soft warm and fuzzy and the natural world creeps out from under it in the spring in much the same way we human folks emerge on a cold winter’s morning eager for the Suns warming rays and a cheerful activity to set the blood a tingling.”  

“You’ve caught on to the idea Henry, even if you are a flatlander Pennsylvania dutchman.”   

“Down home, we do have snow, but what gets me is they talk of going sleigh riding when they refer to sliding on a sled on a hill and the real glory is sleighing behind a team.  

In front of the former Rangeley Post Office. (Photo courtesy of the late Arthur Guerin)

“I have been automobiling on New Year’s Day way up over the mountains, but of course when you get in the mountains, very high, then you do find snow in in plenty. One hunter friend of mine told me how he came to a steep climb on a winter’s night with his automobile. The hill was glare ice. The wheels just turned round and round but the machine would not climb an inch. He did not dare take the brake off for fear the car would slide downhill. He then got out and thought the situation over. The heavy chain he applied failed to give the car a grip, and what to do he did not know. It was dark and bitter cold, yet that hill must be climbed. Finally, he just let the wheels keep turning until he had made them wear a place through the ice and get a grip again. Then making a last try for the hill and he won out.”  

“Well, he got out of a bad fix in pretty good shape, I think.” 

“Many people do not want to locate in Maine for fear of the long cold winters, but let me tell you Henry, snow is healthy. And a good cold climate for a good part of the year is bracing! The beautiful Maine summer more than compensates anyone for the long winter months. For down in Pennsylvania, they really are not any too long at all, but to those folks, they seem very long. In Maine we enjoy the quiet and restful peace which follows when a busy world is shut out for a while. I wish that every part of this mad world could somehow know just such an enforced peace, for perhaps it would do us all good.”