Mild winter welcomed by folks Down East

What’s that about a January thaw, when there’s a warm turn in midwinter with genial sunshine, melting snow and southerly breezes blowing from down Bermuda way?

For us Down East Mainers, that saying is about as inside out as Hoyt’s long johns, which were regularly flipped instead of washed. What we’ve had around these parts is a long winter warm spell broken only by a midwinter freeze.

Undoubtedly, this has been the mildest winter we’ve witnessed, at least till now with January more than half over and all of us on the downhill slide, they say.

Usually, there’s rock-hard ice underfoot since before Christmas, but not this year, as our boots slop in the wet gravel around by the woodshed.

Just last week, neighbors were outside one balmy afternoon washing their car as though it were April, not January. That same day, two bicyclists made their way around the park, looking as natural as eider ducks at play.

The only snow in January hasn’t been enough to leave deer tracks, and the few icicles that have formed on the eaves dropped with a tinkle the minute the sun rose high in midmorning.

As always, the wind has been raw, cutting right to the bone, stinging the cheeks, sending the wind chimes out back into constant clanging and shaking the leaning spruce tree so hard the roots rock the ground all around the trunk. There’s rarely a winter’s day when the wind isn’t raising whitecaps in the bay or flapping the flag at the entrance to town.

But nary a soul around these parts is griping about this winter, not this winter with its rain instead of snow, its sunshine, its starry nights and crispy clean air just cold enough to puff out rings with your breath.

The past several days, we’ve shivered a bit when the thermometer outside the kitchen window read single digits and the fierce wind found its way through any crack under the door or windowsill. A few two-dog nights are to be expected in high winter when sea smoke and deep freeze are common. When, truth be, the chocolate Labs prefer the bed to the floor on any night of the year but especially when coyotes are yipping and crying over the hill, scaring the two pups under the covers.

But we’ll take this January, by darn. We’re sure to have snow, ice, cold and plenty more winter ahead. But one day in late February – not too terribly far off – we’re bound to have a sea turn the old-timers called a “snow eater:” a blast of warm air from off the ocean that dissipates the snow cover faster than the sunniest day.

During that spell, it is said, the mist will rise from the drift, the water will run at the roadside, and the brooks will be bank-full. According to the “Yankee Dictionary”: “Here and there, as the snow is eaten away, appear patches of moist grass, and for one who looks sharp, the first faint tint of green.”