Gazing out at the pristine snow-covered landscape just beyond my living room window, I’m momentarily overwhelmed by the realization that I live in a winter wonderland.

The key phrase in the preceding sentence is “gazing out at,” which clearly indicates I’m observing the phenomenon from a safe distance. 

Also, please note that in this context my use of the term “wonderland” is meant to connote incredulity rather than awe, as in “I wonder why the heck I’m not tanning on a beach in Florida right now!”

To say winter is not my favorite time of year in Maine is an understatement. As noted previously in this space, the almost complete lack of sunlight would be depressing enough without precipitously plunging temperatures accompanied by 50 mph arctic blasts capable of flash freezing human flesh in a matter of seconds.

Think I’m exaggerating?

The weatherman is predicting a wind chill factor of -30 F today.

So I guess that means if you slip on the ice whilst attempting to retrieve the morning paper in your bathrobe and slippers, you’ve got like five minutes to live? Thanks for the heads up.

Let’s face it: wintertime in Maine is a lot like camping out for several months in a walk-in freezer, occasionally venturing forth to skate along highways and back roads coated with “wintry mix,” creating the sort of treacherous road conditions that tow truck drivers must fantasize about all summer long.

“But Tim,” you’re probably thinking. “You’re a Mainer. Aren’t you supposed to love the Maine winters?”

Whoever sold you that line of baloney is probably from away. 

I experienced my first Maine winter more than a half-century ago, when they were far more severe than the ones we’ve come to expect in the era of global warming. And frankly, I don’t ever recall much discussion about folks “enjoying” a Maine winter. A lively chat around the old wood stove back then would most likely have involved swapping coping strategies for surviving until mud season without going completely 'round the bend. 

Of course, it’s quite possible that my distaste for winter developed at least partly in response to being tossed in at the deep end of the snow bank, as it were.

I was, after all, born in northern Aroostook County, just a stone’s throw from the Canadian border.

The county has long been famous for its severe winter weather. If you doubt it, you have a standing invitation to attend my next mid-winter performance at The Caribou Performing Arts Center. When you arrive and pull into the parking lot, please note that more that half your fellow audience members are driving snowmobiles.

Although I don’t have many specific memories of those harsh Aroostook winters of my early childhood, I’ve seen enough photos to give me a pretty good idea of what it was like.

One of my favorites from the old family album is a black and white photo of my mom, bundled up in a wool coat, muffler, hat and gloves, clearly hovering on the brink of hypothermia, yet somehow managing to look stylish as she pushes my brother and me along a snowy sidewalk in Limestone circa 1953.

We’re just a couple of toddlers swaddled in puffy snowsuits squinting out at the frigid landscape; but the part of the photo that always draws my eye is a small dark cross shaped object which appears to be floating in a sea of white several feet above my mother’s head.

At first glance this shape might conjure up notions of some otherworldly spiritual apparition or even one of those blurry snapshots of an indistinct object that’s either an interplanetary UFO or a hastily tossed hubcap. 

Upon closer inspection it becomes clear that the dark cross in the photo is, in fact, the upper third of an old wooden telephone pole.

The confusion comes from the fact that the first 12 or 14 feet of the pole are completely obscured by a white snowdrift.

That’s right chummy. The pile of snow lining the road is taller than the roof of your trailer!

So I guess that brings us back to where we started. If I’m so darned sick of Maine winters, why do I stay here instead of heading for Florida like so many other snowbirds?

I don’t honestly know. I suppose I’m just used to it after all this time. Maybe if I didn’t have the winter to complain about, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

Of course there’s an old Maine saying that explains it as well as anything else: “If you can’t take the winters, you don’t deserve the summers!”