Old Man Winter

Sippican Cottage has a great post that is a reminder of what it is like to live where winter gets rough. [The video of Mount Washington, New Hampshire is also worth checking out.] An excerpt:

They'll find you in the spring in western Maine if you pretend winter doesn't exist. You're not going anywhere, and you're not doing anything without paying attention to it when it shows up. And you're not staying home, either, without paying winter's attention vigorish. If the power went out in Massachusetts, we'd have a jolly fire in the ornamental fireplace, made entirely from cardboard and bits of cut-off wood left over from building the house, and wait for the television to be restored. If the power goes off overnight in Maine in January, you've got about four hours to do something about it before the water in the toilet bowl turns to slush. I have a back-up plan for heat, and a back-up plan for that plan, too, and I'm probably considered woefully unprepared by my wiser neighbors. But I do get the concept, so elegantly put by my dead neighbor, E. B. White: just to  live in winter is a full time job.