I think this is the first genuine blizzard of the winter, it reminds me of the first winters I experienced here when I first came up. Massive and windswept snowstorms were a common feature of life here in the winter, and they are rare now, and subject to the greedy and profitable hysteria of the weather channels, which have weaponized winter and found a way to get rich off of it. The farmers never named storms or tracked them or knew all that much about them.

They were a feature of winter, if you don’t want big storms, they would say, move somewhere else. But the farmers never did. Winter always defined this place, and still does. Without blizzards and biting cold, Spring has less meaning, the distinctiveness of the seasons is one of the things I most love about being here.

Spring is so sweet, winter so mysterious and intimidating. We prepare for winter all year here, we still do. Up here, we know climate change is real but we can’t quite picture life without blizzards.  In two or three weeks, I will start ordering firewood for next winter and place my hay order.

It’s supposed to snow until tomorrow afternoon, we’ll see. My bones say otherwise, I think we’ll get about a foot, not 24 inches and I think it will peter off sometime tonight. I have nothing to base that on but how much my frost-bitten fingers and goes (from previous winters) throb, and they tell me a foot.

I’m going to venture out ever few hours to brush off the cars, take some photos, look for the magic in every blizzard, our menu is good second cut hay, the expensive and rich stuff for energy, books and soup and I proposed to Maria that we get in bed this afternoon and read and snuggle. I give good massages, she says.

I believe in climate change, I know it is real, unlike some senior officials in our government, but it will never turn winter into something to fear for nme