This column marks the beginning my sixth year of writing for the Daily Hampshire Gazette. That first January I wrote about the scarcity of snow. As I weighed what to write this month, idea after idea presented itself. I tossed them because the near lack of snow refused to leave my thoughts.

Initially, I wanted to write about happiness. I thought of Irish music as I had just heard a beautiful new version of an old rebel song. My heavy heart said no.

I grew up in Michigan at the 42nd parallel. Winters were always wet. But wetness took different forms. From the central core of the Mitten, northward to the Upper Peninsula, winter moisture was locked in snow several feet deep. However, along the state’s encompassing shoreline, and, for several miles inland, winter wetness often meant sleet and, even, ice. One winter, while I was still in elementary school, the sidewalks were under ice two inches thick.

As kids, we knew that snow began to fall in November, prompting our home town to set up the ice skating rinks in the parks. However, as I write this, I remember the Thanksgivings too warm for snow, when sleet washed away any hope of ice skating after our turkey dinner. That was in the mid-to-late 1950s.

I came to New England in 1976. Nashua, New Hampshire in winter resembled Ann Arbor in winter. My ex took a picture of me, standing in front of the snow ploughed from the parking lot of the nearest grocery store. The pile was more than twice my height.

I thought this is how it will be. I was wrong.

We bought a house in Massachusetts in November of 1977. I was pregnant with our first child and we were excited about the house and the soon-to-arrive baby. We visited a small animal shelter and adopted a German Shepherd puppy. I learned about a farmer in a nearby town, who sold animal feed. I drove over to buy dog food. The farmer was more than 60, with a sun crisped and wrinkled complexion and a slightly bent back. “This winter isn’t good,” he said. “There is not enough snow. If the land is without snow cover in January, there will be drought in July.”

I listened as my ancestors surely listened to settlement elders. I thought of the wisdom this man acquired while plowing his fields and herding his cows. I respected his life lived within nature. I was honored to receive some of his wisdom

A few years passed. Winters in Boston ranged from just below zero to a brief spike to 50 degrees during 1980. A decade later, the winter temperature did not fall to zero and there were a few more spikes to 50. The year 2000 was a bit colder, but, the next decade, beginning in 2010 was warmer overall. There was a single day below 10 while other days reached the 60s. The year 2020 saw the return of a single temperature below zero. Between the 2020 New Year and the present, there were about 8 days when the temperature was below 10, but the average temperature has been a number you see most mornings: 36.

When I wrote that column five years ago, I compared what the farmer told me to California’s diminishing snow pack. I was still teaching and my students, college freshmen, greeted me with their disapproval of Senator Inhofe who brought a snowball into chambers as “proof” there is no global warming. I told them that when I was their age, I traveled to Washington, D.C. where a cab driver told me that, as a child, he skated on the Potomac. “That river hasn’t frozen solid in years,” he ended.

In many ways, the cab driver and the farmer were the sort of people we expected to meet during the 1960s. They were gurus. They observed. They remembered. They shared. I’ve told their stories many times. The trouble is that not everyone is ready to listen. Many times, in the supermarket, the equivalent of the agora, on days when our normally grey winter skies are blue and a sweater is sufficient, women have gushed, “Isn’t this a beautiful day,” to which I have said no. It is too warm.

Once, I was challenged when I told the farmer story. The woman answered that we’ve had heavy rains in summer. That’s all we need. I walked away.

How much snow is needed to sustain agriculture? Michigan State University, a Land Grant College, reports that it takes 10 inches of snow to provide a single inch of water. Crops like winter wheat, planted in autumn and sustained under winter snow, need a minimum of three inches of snow, plus double that amount for protection from freezing. Cattle, too, benefit from deep snow that is neither icy nor compacted to fulfill their need for water. The falling snow captures ammonium and nitrogen which bind together to fertilize the land.

The scarcity of snow this winter has me thinking about dry soil in summer, even in spring. Water use was limited across Massachusetts last summer. The Mississippi River failed to empty into the Gulf of Mexico. I think of dry soil, blown by the wind and people like former Senator Inhofe denying global warming.

Susan Wozniak has been a case worker, a college professor and journalist. She is a mother and grandmother.]]>