We woke to an unbelievable 55 degrees!  The air smelled gloriously like spring, but with an underlying chill from the snow on the ground.  That chill didn’t last long.  During the day the temp rose to 60 and as is so typical here, as I found out that first year, melt down came fast and furious.  We might have had a blizzard with nearly 40” of snow just a week ago, today there was less than a foot left, but there was water and flooding and mud everywhere.  I’m actually glad we didn’t try to dig out the generator, it would have been a wasted effort; two days of sunshine and all the snow on the deck is gone.

Neither John nor Eric… nor Jason for that matter, had ever seen such a fast transformation before.  I had, almost every year of the seven I lived in the woods. I remember one year of snow shoeing out in the morning, and by afternoon, I could drive in, the roads were clear of snow except for shady areas.  The temps were in the mid-80’s.  It was incredible.

We left the car in the barn.  From past experience I knew that using the gravel drive while it was so wet would only create nasty ruts, something I didn’t want to deal with.  The upper drive, nearest the house, was well packed gravel and not prone to get muddy, plus it was higher and the water drained away from it.

By noon it was 68 degrees and it hovered there for hours.  With the snow gone from the deck, the wrought-iron patio furniture was once again exposed; we sat in the chairs, feet propped up on the hot tub, just enjoying the sun and the warm air.  It felt so… normal, so right.

The biggest surprise came in the afternoon:  the power came back on!  It was only for two hours, but it seemed like a miracle.  We had come in for lunch, and I saw the coffee pot blinking.  At first I didn’t realize what it meant, but then it dawned on me.  I opened the door to the breaker box and pushed the main back on to its grid setting.  The coffee maker was the one circuit left on the grid, as an indicator. The refrigerator started humming; it was like music.  I wanted to walk thru the house and turn on all the lights, but knew that was a bad idea.  The grid must be very fragile now and too much usage would overload it.  We smiled at each other and hugged for the longest time.  Things were going back to normal.  At least we hoped so.