There isn't much new to report tonight except that both Molly's Falls Dam and Molly's Pond are free of ice. Historically, Joe's Pond goes out 4-5 days after Molly's, however, this is not a normal year, so anything can happen.

Fred checked the clock and pallet tonight and everything looks about the same. These pictures, taken around 7 p.m., show a little more water around the shoreline, but otherwise not much change. From our house the ice in back of the islands looked quite a lot darker as the day progressed. The ice around the pallet looks pretty solid, but it's hard to tell for sure. It wasn't warm today - may not have gotten above freezing, but with runoff from the new snow coming into the pond and the constant wind, I believe the ice may still be thawing.

The Cabot road crew dumped some material into the mud holes today and then leveled it with the grader, making our road very much better. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Early this morning, we had calls from neighbors wondering if they could make it out in any direction. After a few days of being more or less imprisoned by mud, one gets a bit stir crazy, not to mention hungry for fresh food and conversation if living alone and/or not having grocery shopped for a while.

Anyone who has lived on back roads a year or two has learned to keep a good supply of everything on hand, just in case. It may not be mud that prevents "getting out," it could be snow, washouts, trees across the road - any number of things. We consider it part of the bargain we made when choosing to live here. More than a few unsuspecting newcomers have been disenchanted with that choice after a year or two. I remember one doctor who gave it up due to a couple of horrendous mud seasons (and the very next year after the family left, we had one of those "hardly a puddle" seasons); then there was the young wife from Arkansas who slid off the road one slippery morning and came to our house to use our phone, letting loose a string of expletives worthy of a seasoned sailor at the road, the weather, and especially her husband. They parted that spring and we never saw her again. Then there was the couple who winterized a small cottage as best they could and spent the winter in two rooms supplemented by a mobile home. They made it through the winter, but left in the spring, as I recall. Country living is not for everyone, for sure.

At the other extreme, we once had an old fellow from Canada come to the farm to do some lumbering. He wanted nothing to do with living at the house, but built himself a sturdy domed shelter of boughs and bark and spent the winter in the woods, cutting the big evergreens and limbing them for my father and uncle to haul out with horses. Occasionally he would ride out on a load of logs and catch a ride to town for a few provisions, but he seemed content to live in solitude in the woods.

Then there was the young man who was attending Lyndon State College and working on the farm when my uncle owned it. He used scrap lumber to build a small A-frame on the old Bayley Hazen Road near where the Leinoff's house is now. He would walk over the hill to the farm each morning to help with chores, and then head back to his A-frame to pick up his knapsack and hike down to where he parked his old car at the beginning of what is now Chatot Road, and would drive to school. He'd hike back after classes, help with the chores on the farm, return to study by lantern light, and repeat the process the next day. He made it through the winter just fine. He could have boarded at the farm, but chose not to - proving to himself he could endure the elements, I suppose. We thought he'd give it up after a short time, but he didn't. I've often wondered what became of him.

Mostly those of us who live here permanently don't have the sort of resolve the logger and student had, and we don't get disenchanted to the point of leaving - we're just somewhere in between. We can take the inconveniences most of the time, but we aren't above complaining after a long winter and extended mud season when we begin to feel we've definitely had enough already.