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March, 2007
Milking the Pow Cow
By Patrick Abbott
Have you ever waited for something a really long time? And not had any guarantee that it would ever even come. Every day you wake up and think maybe tomorrow will be the day. You go to the mailbox hoping that your x-ray specs or you spy camera will be there, you open the door, and nothing. Day after day nothing but false hopes dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks of life. You start to get impatient and begin to take it out on others. Like the poor mail lady. “Where’s my spy camera? WHERE’S MY SPY CAMERA? WHERE’S MY SPY CAMERA?!”
Or in my case it is the poor weather man. Each week he has some new theory about a “Significant chance for potential snowfall, possibly accumulating.” And when nothing happens he says, “When you’re right 51% of the time your wrong 49%.” And then he stands there smiling and joking with the cute news anchor while I hurl insults, curses and whatever else is laying around directly at the TV.
We snow lovers are eternal optimists and, therefore, are extremely vulnerable to falling for predictions of snow that turn out to be only a few centimeters or nothing at all. Usually when a forecaster calls for a significant snow event a week and a half in advance I don’t give it much of a chance. But when my man with his eye on the sky in St. Johnsbury, Steve Malesky, talked about a change in the national weather patterns that could give rise to a powerful storm I listened carefully. Sure enough a week later there was talk of the approaching storm. Everyone was in consensus that it would be a lot of snow but there were varying opinions on how much, all agreed that it would be counted in feet in the mountains.
On the night before the storm there was a nervous energy at the ski town bar. Everyone knew of the killer storm bearing down on use like a shotgun full of snow and most were already celebrating even though not a single flake had fallen. We all watched the weather channel intently and cheered as the huge white mass on the screen crossed the southern border of Vermont and crept closer to our northern mountain homes. I called both my brothers in Ohio and Pennsylvania and they confirmed that it was indeed a significant storm and that they were currently getting buried.
I woke Wednesday morning to the sounds of plow trucks. Every Mr. Plow and Plow King was out waging a loosing battle against the snow that just kept falling all day and night. The college was closed and my friends and I headed straight for the mountain and enjoyed a day of ever increasing snow depths. When I reported for work that night on the Smuggler’s Notch snow tubing hill over two feet of snow had fallen. While I reported to work despite the truly amazing snowfall many of my colleagues found escape from their snow filled driveways impossible. There were very few tubers on the hill that night due to the extreme challenge of moving in over two feet of fresh powder. I would watch the people that did brave the storm slowly materialize out of the blowing snow. Moving slowly with arms outstretched for balance, the snow zombies trudged along through the drifts. It was a surreal night. College was canceled on Thursday also and my brother Dan made it up from Pennsylvania for the weekend. All the eastern snow faithful were finally blessed; I guess dreams really do come true.
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