Snowtopia

March, and we are due to get our biggest snowstorm of the winter season. We are all so weary of winter. Not Boston weary. (Those poor folks.) Arden weary. Arden is a place that makes you confront the outdoors. We walk to our many local events because parking can sometimes be limited. We hike our woods, play on the Arden Green with our dogs, argue about when and in what form the playground committee is going to replace the sliding board on said green. And argue. And argue. Because being outside is important to us. 

So snow? How does nine inches of stuff impact life in the village? Our streets are more like camp roads in the summer, no sidewalks. We have a single crew of native sons in a truck with a plow attachment taking care of all our tight, vegetation-and-rock-lined roads. If you can catch them on their rounds and throw them a little extra coin, they will take care of your driveway. Mark has been resistant to do so. He takes his shovel and gives our huge, looping driveway all he has in his tank, which is enough to move 3/4 of the snow which, in turn, is enough to get our cars in and out. While he is doing this, I making a huge pot of tomato soup using a recipe from our high school cafeteria. Believe it or not, school cafeterias made homemade soup back in the day. Kids loved it, and I have been asked time and time again for this recipe. (My Uncle Ken  got the recipe upon his retirement as a teacher.) Great for a winter’s day, but even a scaled-down, cafeteria-sized recipe is too much soup for Mark and me as new empty-nesters. No matter. That is what Arden is about.

Out of out window,  we see our friends with their dog. They are out on walk, taking photos of the untouched beauty. I wrangle them inside in spite of protests that they are all snowy and that their dog is going though his rambunctious teen years. (Let our old man pug deal with him.) After we feed our friends unsolicited soup and grilled cheese and send them on their way, I deliver more soup to neighbors. We are waiting to hear if the evening’s concert at the Gild Hall will go off as planned. The Arden Concert Gild  and the musicians they attract there are subjects for a whole other blog entry. Suffice it to say, we have great and talented musicians from all over the world coming to entertain our village and that the whole enterprise is run by volunteers. Tonight’s offering is a sold out concert by Jay Farrar, a folk rock singer of the band Sun Volt. 

It’s on! The opening act has canceled due to weather and been replaced by a super secret act. Arden folks are encouraged to walk or carpool due to the snow. Being less than a half mile away, we walk and are surprised at just how light the world looks at 7:30 at night when it has snowed. We have to be careful. The roads are narrow, and when cars come, we don’t have much room. A friend of mine observed that you can differentiate Arden folks from out-of-towners at a concert by their footwear. Tonight I am wearing hiking boots with removable Yak Trax which accessorize beautifully with my all gray ensemble of knit dress, leggings, and chunky cowl.

photo by Joe del Tufo

I am music appreciation novice. I don’t listen to much radio, preferring audio books. But now that we are in Arden, I am being introduced to all kinds of live music. We go to more of the offerings than not. Why wouldn't we? When you can walk to and from the concerts? The hall is abuzz with the news of the opening act. Some people, those who volunteer, are in the know. They lord it over the rest of us while we get seats and go to the bar for Dogfish Head beers, sold for $3 because they are one of the concert gild’s sponsors. Our friend Larry has sneaked bourbon cherries inside sandwich baggies and offers us tiny cocktail forks to fish out the really super-soaked specimens at the bottom of the bag. The trick is not to stab the bag. 

The moment of truth arrives, and we are treated to the musical stylings and hip shakes of Rhett Miller. Those who are familiar with his work gasp and cheer at the “get”. His gig was cancelled at the Queen in downtown Wilmington tonight, so this worked out perfectly (for us). It turns out that our friend Cynthia was instrumental in this deal. She had already been making some secret deals of her own with Rhett, trying to get him to come to her barn, site of its own concert series, to riff with some local musicians in an after-party. 

photo by Joe del Tufo

The man starts playing, and I am an immediate fan. I can’t speak to Jay Farrar. After the energy and raw magnetism of Rhett, Jay’s voice and music puts me in a trance. It makes my mind wander. I cannot focus.  The number of encore songs he performs are lost on me. The buzz of bourbon-soaked maraschino cherries has long since worn off, and I’m ready for the after-party.

This is when we find out that Rhett has bailed on that front. He has an early morning flight to the west coast, but the local artists still want to hang and play. We walk another quarter mile to our friends Cynthia and David’s barn and help them set the stage with votive candle in assorted jelly jars, pillar candles in Ikea lanterns, and the essential plugging-in of the disco ball. They have never had a musical event in their barn in the winter. An exception was made for Rhett. Also for Rhett—a requisite bottle of Jameson, which we quickly avail ourselves of while waiting for the space heater to do its magic. 

Snow-covered creek in Arden Woods

What ensues is glowy and boozy and a little blurry around the edges. It involves lounging on pillowed sofas in the round, shaking percussion on dubious beats, and the ill-conceived passing out of harmonicas. A musical slurry with some good, honest, homegrown music at the center of it. It’s about 2:30 when Mark and I stumble out of the golden glow and into the silver glow to walk home. The moon is full and directly overhead, lighting all of the snow-covered branches and the still-white streets. It’s a school night, except that the local district has already cancelled school for the next day. Mark decides he will take a vacation day tomorrow which is today. We remind ourselves that the last time we were out and about this late at night, we were taking our daughter to the emergency room. (For that story, see the blog entry entitled Rebels and Ice Cream.)  When we arrive home, we discover that our driveway has been completely cleared. We find out later that Denis, one of our neighbors to whom I brought soup, finished our driveway and also helped open up who-knows-how-many other neighbors’ driveways with his snow blower. He has a new lease on life after finding out this week that his cancer is in remission.
After we wake mid-morning, have a big breakfast out, and take an achingly beautiful hike in the woods, another neighbor returns our soup container with homemade pecan layer bars inside. She is newly retired with time to bake. We are tired and sore from navigating the snowy terrain. A pecan bar never tasted so good.

Oh, yeah. I am so ready for spring I could cry, but if winter keeps giving us gifts like this, I can hold out for a little while longer.