A Season of Confounded Expectations The north woods of Maine, where our family of five is spending a year, is a place defined by winter. The intense cold shapes everything that lives in these woods. The long legs of the moose enable it to walk in deep snow. The meadow voles and red squirrels tunnel through the snow. The local people are paragons of self-reliance. Winter is the defining season of northern New England. Even more so than football or baseball season. The cold of winter begins and ends on a specific day. It is not a gradual change. A cold front moves in from the north one day and winter is here. This year, the local lake froze on Dec.19 and the snow melted on March 17. Three months of cold. There was not much snow this year. The ground is bare now, but last year the ground was covered with 20 inches of snow on March 17, according to NOAA's snow data. Cold without snow is pointless in my view, and lots of snow was what I was most looking forward to in Maine. The snow transforms the landscape and gives you a compelling reason to be outside in the cold. We were ready with snowshoes, cross-country skis, sleds and snowmobiles, not to mention seven cords of wood. But the snow only arrived in mid-January and was gone two months later. We still enjoyed the snow almost every day. The boys did sled runs down a mile-long stretch of our driveway and called me from the bottom on the two-way radio to come get them on the snowmobile. On snowshoes, I followed coyote tracks through the woods. The boys all learned to cross-country ski, and we took several snowmobile trips on Maine's 14,000 miles of interconnected and groomed snow trails. From the cabin, one can ride a snowmobile into Canada in about three hours. The best trails, however, were the dozen miles of private trails right behind our cabin, and I spent several perfect afternoons on them, cutting across moose and fox tracks. We read and heard so much about the harsh winters in the north woods of Maine that mentally we were ready for a winter that would define our year in the woods. It did not happen. This winter was the one of the warmest on record in New England (though we are still hoping for a surprise spring blizzard). In listening to longtime local residents talk about the animals and birds in the area, a mention of climate change is not rare. We're in Piscataquis County, one of the most rural and Republican areas of New England. It was the only county in New England to vote for John McCain in 2008. Yet I have not met a single climate-change denier here (which also illustrates the dangers of stereotypes). Local people may not agree on what is causing climate change, but they see the impacts around them. The maple sap tapping season is starting earlier, the lake's ice is not as thick as it used to be, and the moose have had more ticks in recent years. A day after the snow melted, we saw our first butterfly and red-winged blackbird, sure signs that spring is near. But I am missing the snow already. After the snow comes the mud. Mud season is the unofficial fifth season in Maine. The melting snow and the frozen ground create an endless mud pit. The kids love it, though, and have already spent hours building channels and dams in the mud and meltwater. After mud season comes black-fly season, and then finally comes the summer season we know we love. Anyone want to buy a lightly used snowmobile?