Snow Woe

Stories of rooves collapsing under weight of snow give caretakers the shivers. Last week, the rush was on to find people willing to trek on snowshoes into regions where snowplows don’t go, carrying ladder and shovel. I don’t have to do that anymore, but I’ve done my share of it over the years. When heavy storms come fast on the heels of other big storms, demand for shovelers goes through roof, so to speak, and those willing to do it can almost name their price.

One of the properties I manage

As a teacher who had week a off in February, it was often a good way to pick up some quick cash. Driving from Lovell to South Portland last Thursday, I noticed the few other vehicles on the road with me were pickup trucks, either with plows on the front or ladders tied on the top. Those were guys heading somewhere to shovel a roof.

It’s exhausting work, better suited for young men but I still do a small roof of my own, much to my wife’s consternation. “Why don’t you just hire someone?” she says, but it’s an aging guy thing. If I stop doing that, what else will I stop doing? I intend to keep it up as long as I can. I hire people to shovel the properties I manage though. I call myself a property manager instead of a caretaker because I do very little of the physical work anymore.

Another property I manage

I take care to find good people to do it and make sure it gets done properly. That’s my stock in trade now. Guys with shovels in their hands sometimes resent the managers who hired them, thinking managers don’t have to work as hard for their money as they do. Those thoughts passed through my mind more than once when I was starting off, but now I know that managers earn their pay too.

Roof shoveling is an entry-level position. Not a lot of skill is required, mostly just a strong back and a willingness to use it. There is some thinking required though because each roof is different. Most of the remote camps on the back side of the lake are small with shallow-pitched rooves. A small ladder reaches them and they’re not dangerous if you should fall off. The job is done quickly and most of the work is getting there and back. Some, however, are larger with two or even three stories and steep-pitched rooves. For those, it’s best to start at the ridge line and work downward because the danger of falling off is greater near the eave. If you started at the top, then by the time you get to the eave there’s a deep pile to cushion you where you’re likely to hit bottom.

Several times snow gave way under my feet near the eave. Down I went feet first into the pile up to my shoulders. I was grateful to be unhurt, but it took enormous effort to get myself out. It’s a helpless feeling being stuck in deep snow. Last week, for example, I was on snowshoes packing down a path for the delivery man to my oil fill pipe in Lovell, which is on the other end of my house from the driveway.

Snowcraft Snowshoes from Norway, Maine

The first forty feet or so was easy because it was already packed by snow that had slid from the metal roof, but when I got to the gable end and stepped down, one snowshoe slipped off I fell backward into about four feet of loose snow, some of which had gotten up onto the bare skin of my back. When I tried to right myself, I discovered my arms weren’t long enough to find solid ground. I felt around for the lost snowshoe then used it to pack snow around me enough to push off and get vertical again.

From Norway, Maine Historical Society

I bought those snowshoes at a yard sale and thought I’d gotten a good deal. I changed my mind while trying to get the snow out from under my sweater that was melting against my skin. The bindings were poorly designed and the shoes themselves were too small. I think they were meant for following behind someone on bigger snowshoes breaking trail. I have some bigger ones I used for many years but they’re older than me.

From Norway, Maine Historical Society

They were made in Norway, Maine by Snowcraft, Inc. sometime between the 1920s and 1940s back when Norway called itself the “Snowshoe Town of America.” They have curved ash frames and netting of shellacked cat gut. Leather bindings have dried out and are tearing in a couple of spots. I’d been meaning to have them repaired but kept putting it off. For that, I’d have kicked myself in the butt but the snow was too deep to accomplish that maneuver.

Cold Morning Muse

Moonset over Chatham, NH

So cold it was the other morning the leaves of my wife’s rhododendrons were curled up. The previous night’s full moon lit surrounding woods with silver and it’s nearly always frigid under a full moon in a Maine winter. The sun had been up an hour and I should have gone out to run, but I decided to wait ’til noon. My iPhone app said it would be 22 degrees by then and my ears wouldn’t freeze too badly. Could wear a hat I suppose, but I don’t like to.

The Moats and Mt. Kearsarge

Cold winter mornings put me in writing mood and that’s what I planned. By noon I’d feel like getting up to stretch my muscles and clear my head. Running in cold air helps that. It was time to renew work on a big writing project I had put down last spring because I had to get away from it. I was so far into it all winter that I couldn’t see it whole. So immersed was I in its parts that it wasn’t clear how they’d fit together and flow and I hoped my six-month respite would remedy that.

The Baldfaces in winter

My workspace in our Lovell house is an upstairs office, and it was a mess. I don’t let my wife clean in there so everything had a layer of light-gray dust. Cobwebs formed in the windows and mustiness assaulted the nostrils of anyone entering. Anything touched would leave fingers chalky. Clutter covered my desk and every other horizontal surface. Boxes spilled out of the closet prevented closing its bi-fold doors. It’s a former bedroom and was always neat and clean when it belonged to my daughter - and she went off to college twenty years ago. I had cleaned it up before, but I couldn’t remember the last time. Organizing my writing project would take several weeks at least and attempts to do it in an unorganized environment would probably retard the effort.

Winter sunset over Jackson, NH

In case the reader get an impression that I haven't labored in my office for a long time, let me say that I have a high tolerance for messy work environments. However, it had deteriorated to the point where even I couldn’t stand it anymore. Cleaning up my sorry space should only have taken an afternoon, but so many old papers and pictures were unearthed to re-read and re-examine that it took me two days. Such textual and visual remnants of times gone by evoked memories and emotions - most good, some not, but all of them vestiges of ordinary life. I had to feel them and let them go. Some of these sentimental remnants I saved, but the bulk of them went to the dump along with old computer equipment, old files I would never need (I hope), and even some old photographs. These last were images that looked great on a computer screen, but lost something when I sent them out to be printed as eight-by-tens. There was enough old stuff to fill two trash barrels, which I immediately took to the dump lest I change my mind and retrieve any of it.

The back field in winter

My office windows overlook a back field I spent seven years clearing with my my old chainsaw and a 1949 Ford 8N tractor. Never do I tire of looking at the view all that clearing exposed. I cut about eight cords a year to heat the house each winter until I opened up the woods as much as I wanted. All four children have been gone for several years and we don’t really need all this space which we now heat with oil. My wife would like to downsize - and I see the logic in that, but I like it here. Some of my life’s labors haven’t produced much but that long labor did. Where else would I be able to look out on such a beautiful result? Someday I’ll leave, but knowing me, I might put it off so long that I’ll do so horizontally.

August sunset over Mt. Washington, NH

All photos are views I see from my office. Be hard to leave this.