Nineteen sixty-six was a memorable year for me. It was the year of the blizzard in Central New York. Over a couple of days it snowed four feet. I remember the morning after the storm had subsided. My father decided to begin the process of digging out. He and I went into the garage and got snow shovels. Then we opened the garage door and all we could see was a small open space a few inches wide at the top-left corner. The entire opening was filled with snow. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor and shut the garage door before the whole thing fell in on us.

Going out the front door proved easier since the porch roof better protected that. We dug our way down to the driveway and saw that the car, which was parked beside the house, was completely invisible; hardly a bump in the white landscape.

I watched in awe as my father cut rectangular blocks of snow as wide and deep as the shovel. Undercutting them, he’d lift as much as the shovel could hold and throw it into an enormous pile he was creating. We (mostly he) shoveled snow for a very long time, but it was a lot of work for no real return, since the first plow didn’t come through for three days.

In 2003 there was a respectable storm on the first weekend in January. Two feet of snow fell on about a foot that was left over from Christmas. Unlike my father I would have a heart attack if I shoveled snow all day, so I got on my trusty Ford 2000 tractor and pushed it out of the way.

Since I lived on a private road, I was responsible for a total of about a half-mile of plowing divided roughly equally between the road and my driveway. When I was finished, the driveway was a lot like a bobsled run. Snow was piled high on both sides and the overhanging snow-laden trees brought a sense of enclosure like a glistening tunnel.

There have been times in my life when I have decried the winter cold and snow and eschewed as unmanly the use of power equipment. Now that I am a middle-aged desk jockey, I think power equipment is the best thing since the automatic bread-slicer, and I have come to love the cooler temperatures of winter and relish the spectacular beauty of snow.