The first winter I ever spent in Maine was when I was ten years old. My family had moved from Arizona to be closer to some of the family members on my moms side, and it was quite the change. I’d been around snow up in Flagstaff, but snow in a half foot of snow in a high elevation area in Arizona is quite a bit different than a full on winter in Maine. The first big snow storm was mind boggling to me. We were living in a small house that my parents were renting while they built their house, and the snow was right up to the bottom of the windows on our house. The drifts were huge, about half the size that I was at the time, and it was magical to me. I couldn't believe that so much snow could fall overnight, and that the entire world outside the house would be coated in house. The difference between the tiny bit of snow in Arizona in the just under freezing weather was night and day compared to the biting cold of Maine and the mountains of snow covering everything as far as the I could see.
This is like the lakefront piece where you're using words to do a job they can't. Words like mind-boggling, magical, night and day, as far as the eye could see--none of those do the hard work of remembering and of conveying to the reader what it was like beyond a picture postcard image of 'Maine Winter.'
ReplyDelete