It seems the days go by quickly, in spite of it being dull and sunless outside.  The milder days recently and rain last night washed away nearly all of the snow on the ground around Joe's Pond area.  Now the sprinkles we had this morning have turned to snowflakes and the ground around our house has turned from bright green to light green as the snow begins to stick.  My thermometer is showing 32 degrees, down from the 40s yesterday, and seems to be falling.  The prediction is we may have a couple of inches by tomorrow morning.  One thing is for sure, it's a raw day outside.
     We lost power for about 20 minutes mid-morning.  We know from calling Washington Electric there were lots of towns without power, and suspect it has to do with wind.  As the temperature was dropping rapidly early this morning, the wind picked up considerably, and there's still a good 15 mph NE wind registering on my wind gauge.  With the soggy ground, there could be more trees down before things quiet down.
     During the past several days I've been working on a chapter for the West Danville history book about lumbering.  Sometimes  unexpected chapters seem to develop all by themselves.  In working on a segment about general commerce, I realized we have gathered a lot of information about lumbering "back in the day."  I came upon lots of things I needed to verify or that simply piqued my interest, one of which was a new saw that was "rope powered."  This was in one of West Danville's water-powered mills, so I believe it was and "up-and-down" saw.  If you haven't seen one of these old up-and-down saws working, click on the link.  It's amazing they were able to saw the amount of lumber that they apparently did at such a slow rate.  Later on, steam powered sawmills used circular saws that were much faster and gave a cleaner cut.  However - looking at all the moving parts made from wood, I'm fascinated at the ingenuity of the whole process. 
     I never did find out exactly what a "rope powered" saw was all about, but I found out Vermont has made a fairly miraculous comeback in reforestation after the timber here was decimated in the 1800s.  Foresters are saying Vermont - especially the Northeast Kingdom - is beginning to look very much as it did when the first settlers pushed north from Massachusetts.  Of course, there isn't the old growth the settlers found, but because most of the forested land is our state is privately owned and Vermont has strict laws about clear-cutting, we are unlikely to experience the bald hillsides that were once the view from every homestead and highway by the turn of the century.  I particularly like this old photo showing the area above our present beach, the railway station and lumber stacked and waiting to be shipped.  Notice the cleared land behind the town.  This was probably taken in early 1900s.  In this second photo, about the same vintage, the hills above Route 2 are open farm land.  You can also see a boom of logs in the shallows on the right of the picture, just above where the beach is today.  Logs were kept in booms until the mill was ready to take them into the sleuce for sawing.  Booms were held in the cove near Point Comfort, as well.
     I'm watching the temperature still heading downward but also some sunshine breaking through the snow showers.  An interesting weather day!  Also interesting is that our power blipped off again a few minutes ago just enough to startle me and knock my computer off.  Nothing was lost, but it's one of those days it may be better to go read a book than work on the computer.

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