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January 16, 2006
A winter's tale
When people weren’t talking about the Patriots’ demise today, they were talking about the weather. We’ve all heard the old saw that if you don’t like the weather in New England, just stick around for five minutes. Maybe outsiders don’t quite get it, so let me tell you about my weekend.
My wife and I decided to get a cabin-fever inoculation. We like art, and I saw on the web that the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass., was in the final two days of a Winslow Homer show. Because Robert Sterling Clark, the founder, was an avid Homer collector, we knew it would be a good show. We also wanted to see the modern art museum in North Adams, known as Mass MoCA for short.
We set out late Saturday morning in a drizzle. At some points during the 2¼-hour drive, the drizzle became a downpour. The rain sped the melt of the snow cover, and a mist hovered above the ground. It was a dark and gloomy drive through rolling country that is normally lovely. The car thermometer peaked at 53 degrees, a breathtaking number for mid-January.
We had a good time at Mass MoCA, spent the night at a hotel, and visited the Clark the next day before heading back to Concord in mid-afternoon.
By then, a big wind had swept in a storm that left three to six inches of snow. I had heard the storm whistling and rattling the window panes as I watched the Patriots late Saturday night on the sixth floor of the Holiday Inn in North Adams.
But what a contrast to the drive the day before! Saturday’s rain had frozen on the roads, making it difficult for the crews to clear them. The wind whipped the snow into clouds of bright white spray along the way. It also caused drifting, meaning uneven layers of snow capped the ice sheet. There was little traffic, but the going was slow. In the hilly backroads of Vermont, the temperature on the car thermometer never made it up to double digits, bottoming out at 4 degrees – 49 degrees colder than just the afternoon before.
On the other hand, the landscape was beautiful – quintessential northern New England. New snow weighed down the limbs of the fir trees and covered the fields, houses and barns. Plumes of wood smoke dulled the sky. In deep woods, the sun’s rays cut through leafless branches and splashed on the snow bed.
In only 24 hours, the place had been utterly transformed. This is one of the things I have come to love about my home, although it does not seem totally rational. I mean, it was 4 degrees, the wind was cutting, and a snow-shoveling job awaited me back in Concord. But somehow this meeting a northern winter on its own terms makes life seem dear.
Posted by Mike Pride at January 16, 2006 07:08 PM
Comments
MASS MoCA has posted all summer performing arts events @ www.massmoca.org - Good stuff!
Also, the new exhibit Ahistoric Occasion will be open May 27!
Posted by: Megan at May 12, 2006 04:44 PM