No stopping our weather complaints

At the store where I pick up my coffee each morning the conversation turned naturally to the lousy weather we’d been having.

We did have plenty to grumble about, of course, what with the relentless cold rain and wind that has been plaguing Maine for what seems like weeks now, erasing what should have been a glorious autumn just as it had washed out our eagerly anticipated spring.

And as if the cold rain weren’t bad enough, and the sleet that followed it, it was actually snowing as we stood in the store and shook our heads with disgust.

If there’s one thing that can make a gathering of Mainers look to the sky and sneer it’s the sight of snowflakes in October – while the World Series was still being played, for goodness sakes.

“Well, winter’s here already,” said one man as he headed for the door. “Must be time to move down South.”

Normally a remark like that would have had us all echoing in agreement, but not this time.

We paused instead, imagining all of the killer storms that have lashed the sunny South so mercilessly. For an instant we pictured the street signs outside being ripped from their moorings, tree limbs and rooftops flying down the middle of Main Street, windows blowing out, cars and houses underwater.

“On second thought,” the man said, “with all those hurricanes down there maybe we should just stop complaining about the weather here in Maine.”

He was right, of course, although such a thing could never happen. Not here, not in Maine.

The rest of the world could be consumed by locusts or buried in volcanic ash and Maine people would still be compelled to discuss at length the pros and cons of the weather taking place just outside their front doors. From birth to death, Mainers have an intimate connection to their weather that people in metropolitan settings could never hope to understand.

It’s a powerful bond that governs their moods, affects how they work and play, and slips easily into just about any conversation. And no matter what the weather is like in Maine, it’s never quite right for everyone.

Just a couple of months ago, it took all of our willpower to keep from complaining about the oppressive heat, as if grousing in the summer was somehow a violation of a sacred contract we made with one another over the previous winter and the waterlogged spring.

“If this rain ever stops,” we vowed back then, “I swear I’ll never complain about the heat again.”

Mainers take a complicated approach to weather, sniffing the wind for signs of change and scrutinizing its most subtle variations. Depending on who you talk to, a single day can be either too cold or too warm, too wet or too dry, too brown or too white.

I’ve even known natives who, after bellyaching in traditional fashion about the bitter cold in January, could not help but complain about a sudden mid-winter thaw.

“This just isn’t natural,” one elderly Mainer told me a few years back as he looked suspiciously at the vapor rising off the melting snow and the water running

in rivers down the street. “Something’s gonna happen, you know. We’re gonna wind up

paying for this.”

And we did, of course. The old guy knew his weather.