contrast

My parents live in northern Vermont. The town they live in takes many precautions for the long and snowy winters. The houses are built with slanted metal roofs that are designed for the snow to slide off. Each fall the road crews stick long branches in the ground along the roads to guide the snow plows because sometimes there is so much snow that the boundaries of the roads are not clear. There are also large barrels of dirt along some roads for stranded motorists to use for traction if their cars get stuck.

This year northern Vermont has had record snowfall. It seems like every time I hear from my mother they have just gotten another 12 inches and that she has to keep her walks short because the temperature is 30 below. I am not exaggerating. Yesterday she sent out pictures that showed that the snow in her yard is so high that is comes up to the windows. Each window was about 4-5 inches deep in snow.

Sometimes the snow does not slide off of the roof as designed. When that happens, my parents hire people to shovel the snow from the roof. If they don't it can cause a lot of damage to the house. This weekend they did not need to hire anyone. My father has shoveled so much snow from the porch that he has built mountains of snow in areas of the yard. A few of the mountains were high enough and close enough to the house that he just climbed them to get the snow off of the roof.

I am thinking about them a lot today. Today I made more Easter decorations and took Andrew to the park to enjoy our first day in the 50's. It's incredible to me that a mere 5 hours north of here is such a different climate. And although sometimes I am jealous of their obscene amounts of snow and sometimes I am jealous of their breezy, cool summers, today I was glad for light coats and moderate temperatures.

Sorry mom.