Your Scribe is not one to lament the dearth of snow this winter, but here are a few memories:

'70s - Fortunes Rocks (Biddeford) - In the early '70s, there was a lot of snow. I remember one winter when the icicles reached down from the roof of the small (converted) summer cottage to meet the mounting snowdrifts. On sunny cold days it was magical.

1978 - This was the winter of the Blizzard of '78, though it was worse in Boston than in Portland. I was working at the Portland Press Herald. I (foolishly) went to work that morning. I was not on deadline, so I trudged down to Commercial Street. The tide was rising, and several manhole covers rose off the street with the tide. We were dismissed about noon. I couldn't see for the snow, so I followed a large truck onto the turnpike going south to my home in Kennebunk. Or so I thought. I ended up in Gorham before I realized that he had not taken the turnpike. It took me two hours to get home.

The '90s. I did time in Waterville, which got a lot of snow. Which was good, because I was ski editor for the Maine Sunday Telegram. I skiied at Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Mt. Abram and the other mountains almost every weekend. But I had to commute from Waterville to Portland - daily. You learned to hate those big semis as they came barreling past, putting you into a white haze.

Then there was the ice storm, when, in '96? I was driving west from Portland to Sunday River. All lights were out west of New Gloucester. I thought I was driving back into the 18th century. But arriving in Bethel, the lights were on. You had to admire the grit of the utility workers who struggled first to clear the roads of downed wires, and then to get the power working again.

2004. I had built my cabin, and was anxious to fix it up. So one March I took small pieces of furniture there. But did I have trouble walking the last 100 yards that were not plowed! I carried my Aunt Bea's sitting chair on my back, struggling forth like Dr. Zhivago coming home from the tundra. (An aside: What I had to look forward to was an unheated cabin without power, not the glorious Julie Christie as in the movie). But I struggled on, and managed to furnish part of the cabin on a day when I just should have stayed home.

Do I miss the snow?

No.

But snow does make for memories.

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