In the midst of winter and in the midst of a pandemic, spring can seem very far away. The snow brings solace for some. It remakes the landscape and offers fresh ways to enjoy the outdoors. For others, especially this year, the snow and cold may intensify feelings of isolation.
But spring will surely arrive; it always has. In the meantime, it seems fitting to share a few stories from winters past.
Fear in the woods
The Revolutionary War had been grinding on for years. Though they were distant from most of the fighting, settlers in Dummerston knew that remote outposts like theirs were not immune from attack.
One day in 1780, the settlers in one part of town believed they heard evidence of an impending raid by Indians and British soldiers. Throughout the morning, sharp bangs, like gunshots, rang out from the woods. As the day wore on, they heard more bangs, and at dusk they saw smoke rising from the forest. Fearing an assault was imminent, they fled their homes.
Making their way through the thick, new snow, they traveled to a more densely settled part of town, apparently figuring there was greater safety in numbers. Others were so frightened they traveled on to nearby Brattleboro.
The next day, a pair of armed settlers trekked back to their part of town to see what had become of their homes. They feared the worst. Seeing that the door to one of their homes was open, they entered, guns drawn, but the only soul they found inside was a rummaging pig.
Then they heard what sounded like gunfire. Were they being ambushed? The noise came from the woods. The men bravely went to investigate. They heard more bangs, and were relieved to discover the noise was only the sound of branches cracking under the weight of the recent heavy snow. And they later learned that the smoke they had seen the previous day was from the campfire of some surveyors in the area.
So much snow, and no food
The next year, 1781, the winter weather was brutal — the coldest anyone could remember. In these conditions, a company of Vermont militiamen set out from Bennington to southeastern Vermont. The men hiked through knee-deep snow and soon ran out of rations. They looked for a home where they could find food and warmth, but found none.
Eventually, one of the men broke down from exhaustion. He lay down in the snow and declared he could walk no farther. The others revived the man and coaxed him to walk, but within a few miles he collapsed again. The soldiers decided to give him up for lost and soldiered on. But then they thought better of it, figuring that their comrade’s “slumber would end in the sleep of death.”
Not surprisingly they found him where they had left him. This time, the men didn’t use words to persuade him to walk. Instead, they kicked the man and cuffed his ears until he got angry. Now that they had his attention, the soldiers got him to promise to continue.
They soon happened upon a farmer, returning with meal that he had just ground at the mill. He said the men could have all they could eat. The soldiers built a fire. They improvised bowls by pushing in the crowns of their hats, and mixed the meal with water to make dough for bread. But some of them couldn’t wait that long; they chose to eat the ground meal dry.
Restored, the soldiers walked on, until they reached the frigid West River. They waded across the shallow river, using their bayonetted muskets like lethally sharp walking sticks to keep from slipping in the fast-moving water.
“(A)fter that,” remembered one of the men years later, “we had plenty of music from our rattling, icy pantaloons.”
When they reached Townshend, they found a house where they could rest. The family let the men dry their clothing by the fire and generally served them a “good supper of boiled meat and vegetables such as we had not enjoyed for many a day.”
Fatal advice
On Dec. 19, 1821, Lucy Goodell Blake and her husband, Harrison, received some bad advice. Though several inches of snow covered the road from Arlington to Wardsboro, they were told the route was easily passable; they could make the trip to a Wardsboro inn in about three hours.
The Blakes and their 14-month-old daughter, Rebecca, traveled easily aboard a horse-drawn sleigh for the first 2 or 3 miles, but suddenly the snow started getting deeper. Soon it was 3 feet deep in places and the day was growing dark.
The Blakes improvised. They unhitched the horse to lighten its load. Lucy would ride, holding Rebecca, while Harrison walked beside. They didn’t get far: The exhausted horse eventually refused to continue.
The night was bitter cold and the Blakes were still 5 miles from the nearest home. Harrison gave his thick overcoat and mittens to Lucy and went for help. Lucy would follow, carrying Rebecca. The couple would shout as they walked so they would remain within hailing distance.
By chance, a Stratton resident had also gone missing that night. The man’s son, Johnson Richardson, ventured out the next morning in search. Traveling up the mountain road, Richardson was 2 miles past the last settlement when he found Harrison Blake lying in the snow. In the throes of hypothermia, Harrison was making strange noises and trying to tear off his clothes.
Richardson transported Harrison down the mountain and fetched a doctor. (Richardson’s father had apparently survived the night, since there is no further mention of him in his son’s account.) Regaining his senses, Harrison told Richardson of his missing wife and child.
Searchers raced back up the mountain in the dark and found Lucy, lying face down several hundred feet beyond where Harrison had been discovered. As they lifted her, Lucy breathed several times and died.
About a half-mile from Lucy, searchers stumbled upon a pile of fabric. Lucy had made a nest of Harrison’s coat and some blankets. Inside, the rescuers discovered Rebecca, alive. She had cheated death and would live a long life.
The Blakes’ ordeal might have been forgotten, but a few years later poet Seba Smith wrote “The Mother Perishing in a Snowstorm” about the incident:
“The cold winds swept the mountain height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ’mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child…”
The poem became a ballad in 1843 and printers around the country republished it periodically throughout the 19th century. The story of a young woman lost in the snow, whose last act was to save her child, was exactly the kind of tale Victorians loved, so romantic, so melancholy. To Victorians, the only way the story could have been better was if the family had been attacked by wolves.
Snow tunnels
It was still early March in 1888, the 11th to be precise, but spring seemed just around the corner. There was no sign, and certainly no forecast, that the state was about to get walloped by the most serious blizzard ever recorded here.
Over the next three days, southern parts of Vermont would be hit with 40 inches. The Bennington area would get the most snow, an estimated 48 inches. Other locations reported 2 to 3 feet of snow.
But wind is what separates a blizzard from a mere snowstorm. During this storm, wind speeds of 30 to 40 miles an hour were common. One weather observer recorded winds of 62 miles an hour in the Brattleboro area.
During the storm, train travel came to a halt as trains encountered huge drifts across the tracks. A freight train headed from Rutland to Burlington was stranded by a drift 10 to 12 feet deep and more than 200 yards long.
Across the state, high winds piled snow over the first-story windows of some buildings, while leaving some bits of ground almost bare. Drifts 10 to 15 feet high lined streets in Bellows Falls. A drift 10 feet deep, 22 feet wide and 100 feet long grew next to one hotel. “As a consequence, the novelty of tunnels was the order,” the Bellows Falls Times reported, so people could enter or exit the hotel by way of a tunnel. Elsewhere in town, people dug “canals” to navigate the downtown.
The Rutland Herald reported that a local man working the night shift decided to walk home, a distance of about a half-mile. Setting off at 3:30 a.m., he struggled through drifts that reached his armpits. After about three hours of this battle, he was drenched in sweat. He feared that if he stopped, he would freeze to death.
When a wall of snow 10 feet high blocked his way, he decided to push toward the home of a neighbor instead. He knocked on the door to rouse the occupants and was welcomed in. The man warmed himself and rested until daylight, then ventured out again. Cutting through backyards, he reached home, exhausted and with one ear badly frozen, a half-hour later.
The Bellows Falls Times summed up the days following the storm simply: “No paths, no streets, no sidewalks, no light, no roads, no guests, no calls, no teams, no hacks, no trains, no moon, no milk, no paper, no mails, no news, no thing — but snow.”
Kipling’s strategy
Even a mild Vermont winter is too harsh for some people’s liking. Those who wish we could just skip winter and move straight from fall into spring can always follow Rudyard Kipling’s example.
The famed British writer, who made his home in Dummerston for several years in the 1890s, enjoyed or at least made peace with winter. He cut an intimidating figure around town in the thick fur coat he wore during frigid forays into nearby Brattleboro, and he skied around his property on skis he received from his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
But sometimes, even Kipling grew weary with how winter kept him from some of his passions. On those days, he would set cans into the snow on his property and play a round of golf using balls painted red, so he wouldn’t have to wait until spring to find them.
