We are fast losing our beautiful day. I went for a short walk around noon and it was still nice, but the wind was cold on my way home. I went out past the big field and took a few pictures.

The big field has lots of snowmobile tracks in the deep snow. I didn't see any of the horses that live there, but they were probably near the house at the top of the hill where they could get out of the wind behind the trees. I noticed the unique mailbox at the end of the Wright's drive. It's sort of a replica of their house on the hill and it says "Diesel" on it. (?) I've been trying to reach the Wrights to find out about that, but haven't had any luck this afternoon.

Further along, near Deeper Ruts Road, I could see the Wagner place through the trees. On the upper side of the road it looks like the folks who have a summer place up there may have plowed the road for a while but gave up. Actually, I think the road is left of the depression, and that gully in the snow is a ditch that usually stays open because of the swampiness of that area due to springs.

Back home, I couldn't resist taking a picture of what used to be the steps up past my flower garden from the turn-around in our driveway. We gave up long ago trying to keep the steps open, so I'm defeated in my plan to make it easier and safer to get from where visitors usually park their cars up to our front door. The driveway is very steep and sometimes slippery in spite of our efforts to keep it safe for walkers, so I had a long, easy flight of steps with a sturdy handrail put in . Hardly anyone uses the stairs, even when we are able to keep them clear of snow. We won't see them again until sometime in May, I expect.

I'm not sure how my clump of small birch trees is going to fare - each spring the snow is firmly packed around them and I have to carefully release the lower branches so they don't get broken off. On the other side of the steps is a sumac that probably some bird or squirrel unwittingly planted for me. It's a sturdy, fast-growing unintended addition to the flower garden, but it provides a fair amount of shade and I really like its foliage. It isn't the stag-horn variety, I guess, for there have never been any "flowers" on it, and it's been growing there for about four years. I don't need to worry about it surviving, I'm sure. It'll be either my birches or treasured maples that become casualties due either to snow or mice. A few years ago we found lots of damage to young maples in the woods and around our lawn after an unusually deep snow cover all winter. Mice and other rodents had chewed away at the base of the trees, working under the snow at the sweet, tender bark layer, killing them.

Today I found in one of the albums I'm working with for the Cabot Historical Society, a clipping about the new ambulance the towns of Cabot, Marshfield, Plainfield and Walden purchased in 1972. The four towns raised $3,692 which was matched by federal funding. This new vehicle replaced Cabot's first ambulance, a hearse, that was given to the town by Dr. Frank Caffin in 1967. The article said the new ambulance could transport four patients and two attendants. In the spring of 1973, volunteers built a heated addition on the Fire Department building for the ambulance. The Cabot Ambulance serves a wide area that includes the towns mentioned and also East Calais and the Groton State Forest.

I would imagine most people, even sick as they might be, hesitated to be loaded into that first ambulance. But it served well for several years, and according to the 1972 news article, the town put the old ambulance up for sale. I wonder what its function was in its next life . . .