About 10 years ago the Town Crier did an article on snow birds, those seasonal travelers who head south for the winter from way up north so they can avoid the harsh weather months up there.
From above the Mason-Dixon line, they swarm down in their cars with exotic plates with place names on them like Michigan and Ohio. It might as well be Mars or Neptune as far as I’m concerned.
The first part of the article covered what’s it like to be here in Georgia on the receiving end of the Snow Bird Invasion. The other half covered my very limited sojourns to Florida during the winter months and how I really enjoyed it and “get it” when it comes to driving three or four days to get to where it’s warm and the only snow you see is either on the national weather report or on your snow cone ice treat with grape syrup on it. But now I’ve been to the North in winter and I am ready to report from the front lines of the cold front that stays as stationary as the trenches of World War I!
Traveling back in time
A couple of weeks ago I found myself in Connecticut for a job. While it’s March in Georgia, with flowers starting to bloom and the weather getting warmer (Blackberry Winter notwithstanding), it’s winter up there. Stark, gray, leafless trees; cloudy, cold skies; and miserably cold weather. It was like traveling back in time six or eight weeks, not enough to alter history but enough to make me wish I had more wool socks.
First, here’s what I knew about Connecticut. It was a colony that I think was started after there was a brouhaha (or perhaps it was a fracas) in the Massachusetts Colony, and the loser group left town and headed south.
I know it was the first state to sign the Constitution (Georgia was fourth), Hartford is a center for insurance companies (or at least insurance company names), and that it was the site of a terrible circus fire on July 6, 1944, when the big top of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus burned down, killing 167 or 168 and leaving hundreds injured.
In addition to those tidbits of trivia, I knew it’s a place where a lot of people who work in New York City live and take the train every day to and from work. and who could forget that Connecticut is … has … had … hmmmmm, that’s all I knew about Connecticut going in to work there.
I’ve said Connecticut so few times in my life that I keep calling it Kentucky because they both start with a “K” sound, so when I hit that K in my mind it assumes I’m going to say Kentucky (which I’ve said a lot in my life, especially followed by fried chicken), and so jumps ahead, because why would I be saying Connecticut?
The beach faces south?
One surprise I had about Connecticut was that the beach here doesn’t face east like all the other Atlantic beaches from Florida to Maine, it faces south. I looked it up on a map of the whole coast, that’s the one place where it takes a right turn until it gets to Rhode Island.
On the beach facing the ocean, the sun rises on the left and it sets on the right. and if you look straight across the water on a clear day, in the distance, you can see Long Island, New York. People here talk about running to New York City to pick up supplies and I think “Well, that’s going to be about an 18-hour trip one way,” I tell them farewell and to drive carefully, but then they show back up after about four hours.
Not the season
I’m down near the coast for this project and it’s winter so things are pretty slow. It’s not the “season.” I was in one neighborhood that had about 127 houses in it and the guy told me only about 30 house were occupied year-round. Most of the restaurants close by 8 p.m., and many have signs that say “Closed for the season.” I’d hate to be the guy that has to open one of those places up and start cleaning after a winter of being closed.
It’s a little lonely up here but at the same time they tell you not to park on the neighborhood streets because people up here don’t like that. With less than 30% of people here in some of these places, who is even here to complain? and how are you supposed to have a birthday party for your kids at the house if no one can park on the street?
The people I’ve met have been friendly but maybe that’s why I met them, the others I picture hiding in their house peeking out the blinds just waiting for us to stop for two minutes to check directions, in which case they will rush out and point accusatory fingers at me, notice the Georgia license plate and start calling the cops.
Another thing I noticed was all along the neighborhood streets were these fiberglass poles of red and white, about four and a half feet high, spaced out about a car length apart. I thought that was another thing they were doing to keep people from parking, but one of the locals explained to me that these were there to stick up out of the deep snow to keep people from running off the road. That sounds like a sensible idea.
They just don’t get it
I know back home here in Dalton it’s been raining a lot. My yard is so muddy it has all the ambiance of a pigpen without the benefits of bacon. But it’s been raining a lot up here, too. and their rain consists of ongoing gray clouds leaching out a steady mist or a downpour of heavy raindrops mixed with about 20% big, wet snowflakes. It’s not pretty, it’s just cold and wet and it goes down the neck of my jacket.
And the wind howls off the ocean like the opposite of a blast furnace. A blast cooler, I guess you’d call it. What that means is pretty much from the first day I got here I’ve had a runny nose and it just gets worse. Of course, the people here are used to it and seem to do just fine with about half the clothes on that I have. I stand there shivering like a political prisoner just off the train in Siberia and they ask “You OK?” “I’m freezing!” I say. “Really?” They just don’t get it.
The landscape here is kind of similar to back home but still very different. From a distance it’s hills and ridges covered with forest. But up close you see it’s incredibly rocky, with big boulders and small cliffs all over. Then, at the bottom of the vales, there are lakes, small lakes, all over the place. and they are cold enough people stock them with trout!
And the other thing they have everywhere here are rock walls. The people have been here since the 1600s and so every piece of property seems to have a wall around it, not to keep cattle in but I think just so they could clear the land of rocks and make it suitable for farming, and the edge is where they stacked them. I don’t see how they grew anything the first few years, but with the walls around the property now there are nice, flat yards and fields that look like it would grow good plants.
I’ve seen deer and turkey and raccoons here, and I’m sure there are lots of other animals around. I asked about moose and they said one had been spotted up in the northwest corner of the state near the wilds of western Massachusetts. I don’t think they have a moose at the Atlanta Zoo.
There are boats everywhere but because it’s winter they all have white shrink wrap around them. Giant shrink wrap. So you can’t tell exactly what kind of boats they have here, although it looks like all types, including big sailboats.
And like any shore, they have a lot of rivers and inlets that connect to the ocean. Driving over the bridges provides a great view, and the Connecticut River (which I had actually not heard of) is a big, deep river that goes all the way up to the capital of Hartford.
On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of signs for rivers coming up ahead, especially one called Deep River. It was smaller than our own Stinky Creek, aka Drowning Bear Creek. I’m thinking a colonial timeshare salesman from the 1600s named it that so it sounded desirable to the colonists coming over.
Connecticut is interesting, and there’s plenty of beauty here, but when it comes to wintering I’ll take Dalton anytime, where the season is shorter and most of the days are warmer.