This is week 4 of a 15 month writing project. This week’s assignment is to write about your favorite season. This writing challenge is provided by Julie Goucher from the blog Angler’s Rest.

In case you are just coming to my writings, I want to point out that I am consciously writing all my posts in the third person. My plan is put all the posts together in the end as a book to give to each of my children. I want each post to have a consistent style so I am trying to look at my life and my memories as an outsider looking in, like a reporter or a historian would. I also know that I have my own family photographs that illustrate this memory. Once I locate them, I will update this post!

Favorite Season

New England is one of those places that has distinct seasons. Summers are typically on the shorter side and can be hot and humid with an occasional thunderstorm to break the heat. Winter can last longer than expected. The first snow can fall early in October or late September. The last snow may come as late as Memorial Day at the end May. Or there may be little snow at all, just the bracing temperatures and limited sunlight that signal the season. Spring and Autumn, the transitional seasons, can be leisurely and pleasant or over in the blink of an eye. Northern California is in many ways the complete opposite. Spring, Summer and Autumn often slide unnoticeably together. The Central Valley does not have a high enough elevation to generate snow with only rain and occasionally hail as precipitation. Because of the high heat in the summer, the California landscape is a flip flop of what one might expect in New England. Dried yellow and brown grasses cover the land in summer while plush green fields are visible in the winter and spring during the rainy months. For a child of New England, California can take some getting used to. The normal seasonal cues are not as apparent. If one wants to “visit” the snow or the autumnal foliage, leaving home is required with a minimal 2-3 hour drive. There are some benefits to never having to shovel one’s driveway, but the loss of such seasonal pageantry is debatable.

Cars stuck on the highway

As for a particularly favorite season, Deborah never liked to play favorites. Each season brought its own delights and pleasures. One memorable seasonal event from her childhood occurred in February 1978. A monster storm was heading towards New England. At that time it was very hard to predict and track the weather. This storm took the east coast by surprise in its ferocity. On Sunday, February 5, 1978, the snow storm was predicted but it did not arrive Monday morning as anticipated. Everyone went to school and work as usual. Deborah does not completely remember whether they were sent home from school early that afternoon, but it was a distinct possibility. Other government agencies closed up mid-day and sent their employees home. Sadly, many people did not make it home in time. Thousands were stranded in their cars on the roadways while trying to make it home. Over 3,500 abandoned cars were discovered, just on Interstate 95 alone, after the storm and clean-up commenced. Many people perished from carbon monoxide poisoning when the snow covered up the exhaust in their idling vehicles. Many more people were left without electricity for almost a week. Boston recorded all time high snow falls. Snow drifts reached heights of 15 feet in some locations. After the snow stopped, people were scared to leave their homes for fear of disappearing underneath all the snow. In fact, automobile traffic was suspended for the remainder of the week in Eastern Massachusetts. Only emergency vehicles and snow ploughs were allowed on the roads.[1]

Now why, one might ask, might this be a happy memory? Imagine the psyche of an elementary school aged child. The snow cancelled school for two weeks. In the end, public school children were out of school for three weeks because winter vacation was already scheduled for late February. The drifts were piled as high as small mountains, especially after the ploughs cleared the roads.  Once it was safe to go outside, the snowy landscape became an imaginary wonderland. People dug underground tunnels to rival any Eskimo’s igloo. Fantastical snow sculptures were created. No hills were required for sledding. All other snowstorms pale in the memory of this storm. Anyone who lived through this blizzard immediately knows what one means when referring to the “Blizzard of ‘78”.