Weather and Foggy Memories

Finally, there was a little bit of white frost on the back lawn this morning! The low at my house was 29.5F - but there was a nice sunrise and the frost melted right away. Now we are blanketed in fog. Such is the nature of autumn weather. It's pretty surprising that we haven't really had much frost until now. But the dreary, rainy weather has been both good for our ecology, but not it has taken a toll on some of us psychologically.

I'm usually not a gloomy person, no matter what the weather. I have what I call a "Scarlet O'Hara" attitude so if I begin to feel depressed or sad, I say to myself, "I'll think about that tomorrow," and find something  do, or consciously think about some pleasant memory or plan. You'd be surprised at how many harebrained ideas I have come up with thanks to gloomy weather. I usually have more energy when the sun shines, although I've sometimes found myself simply wanting to sit in the sun and absorb the warmth. Electrical storms cause me to retreat and withdraw - there's a long history of fear in me from growing up on Cabot Plain where it seemed we were always smack dab in the middle and too close to those summer horrors. One thing that always energizes (and sometimes frightens) me is wind. I remember that Grandma Dot Dimick hated wind.

Which reminds me. Yesterday eldest son, Bill asked if I remembered an expression his Grandmother Dimick used when he and his brothers would arrive at her house cold and snowy from playing outside. He remembered her saying something like, "You look like a woolen eeke." Or maybe it was "wooley eeke". He couldn't remember exactly, and I don't recall it at all. I looked at possibilities on line, but didn't find anything even remotely similar. It could have been some expression from her own 1800's childhood. Or perhaps she was saying something entirely different and Bill's 7 or 8-year-old ear interpreted it wrong. Like his younger brother, Bob singing loudly in Sunday School, "Jesus loves me, that I know, 'cause the barber tells me so."

I had the very pleasant experience of having meals at the new Headwaters Restaurant and Pub in Cabot two weekends in a row recently. Both times the weather was ok heading there - a drizzle of rain, but nothing exceptional; however, coming home was an entirely different experience, both times. After leaving Cabot Village, visibility was good until just above Burtt's Orchards. From there to my house there was a pea-soupy fog that cut visibility to about 10 feet. Low beams helped, but it was difficult to anticipate turns and curves, and if you know that section of Cabot Plains Road, it is narrow with lots of dips, curves and a couple of really sharp turns. As well as I know that road, I had a hard time figuring out exactly where I was sometimes and I could easily have ended up in a pasture or driveway. I cannot imagine running into fog like that on a busy highway like an interstate. There's literally no place safe in a fog like that. If you pull over and stop, someone could plow into you from behind, and if you keep going, you risk hitting another vehicle or something else.

The fog is beginning to lift now and I need to get myself together to go into St. Johnsbury. I am looking forward to a sunny afternoon, and hoping that brings with it a welcome burst of energy for those of us who could certainly use it after almost 4 inches of rain (by actual measure, 3.62 in.) in the last 18 days. My records show we hat at measurable precipitation every single day - sometimes just a trace, but that gets reported along with the more substantial amounts. Our water table must be at a pretty decent level by now! My pond has remained full and overflowing nicely, as planned, all summer, with a solid population of frogs - and who knows what else!