If you ask the wrong kind of person, then you'll hear that this winter has been bad. Real bad, according to them. You see, up here in New England, snow has fallen, multiple times, in such great quantities as to be measured by the foot, and it has stuck. On the North Shore, we haven't seen our gray-brown yards in a month.This has required us to shovel and snow-blow and ice-melt the sidewalks and pick at the ice on the roofs. I don't follow the logic that this experience of real winter is 'bad.' After all, we're in New England! In years past we've had months of murky gray cold with not a snowflake in sight: that's a bad winter. When the moon is full in January, it ought to illuminate the snow-covered countryside as if it were a December afternoon. You should wake up at 2 a.m. and wonder if it's time to get up because of the doubly reflected brightness. 'Should' might be too strong of a word, but you get where I'm coming from: in winter, we celebrate Ullr's gifts.
We can downhill ski any winter, almost all the winter long, thanks to man-made snow. All that takes is cold temperatures: the ski resorts do the rest. It takes a special winter to snow-pave the way for my pursuit: ski touring. You ski tour by strapping synthetic "skins" to the bottom of your skis for the ascents and removing them for the descents. Ski touring is great because you can do it almost anywhere: if a trail or a nature preserve is open and its terrain is sufficiently hilly, you can ski tour there. It takes a fair bit of snow to ski up and down the un-groomed and un-lift-served hillsides of New England. Especially along the coast, recent years haven't given us enough to shovel, much less ski. That changed about a month ago, and we're still going strong.
Skiers crave the snow. Our meteorologists hunt it on the forecast radar and in the long-range trends like the ancient soothsayers looking for omens in the clouds and crows. Amulets and talismans have nothing on my brother's ability to divine flakes from the sayings of Dr. Jay at OpenSnow. When there's enough to shovel a path from the front door to the car, skiers get excited. Waking up to a surprise few inches of overnight fluff outside makes us giddy. With enough snow, we'll behave like teenage concert-goers, queuing early in the line for first tracks and skiing all day (or until our legs give out). The approach to weather conversations in my neighborhood is whether we'll dodge the next storm; at the mountain, conversations run opposite: can we get the next storm to pause and dump its snow for a few hours more?
We're experiencing the same winter, the same snow, and having opposite reactions. Ullr brings his snow to the skiers and the non-skiers. It's a matter of perspective, really. I wouldn't claim that ours is better, per se, but it makes winter more fun.
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A Dreamlike Mt. Agamenticus Ski Tour
The coastal snow fell and fell again and we had weeks of cold, keeping our powder fresh. Among the long-dreamt lines I've skied now is, at the end of Mountain Road in York, Maine, Mt. Agamenticus.