When it snows like this, people come out to gawk.
They walk in the middle of the road, because normal cars certainly won't dare to pave the way through a snow tunnel. They say hello as you walk by them, because we're neighbors, and we're in this together. If they decide to say more than "hello," it's usually a joke, like "How's that for a light snow?"
And when your car is buried, they come out again with a shovel, or jumper cables, or maybe even a thermos with warm spirits, all in the name of being neighborly.
As much as I've looked down on snowmobiles for their harm to nature and polluting of the air, I witnessed a sweet moment as I walked out of the Rosauers parking lot: an older woman was standing on the corner with a couple grocery bags, a scarf around her head, boots that went up only to her ankles, her nylon-ed legs and long-ish skirt and long coat surely not providing much warmth. Another woman zipped around the corner on her snowmobile and stopped in front of the older woman and asked if she'd like a ride. The older woman hemmed and hawed for a second as she glanced over this motorized beast, probably imagining what she would look like riding on it, and then figuring that anything would get her home more quickly than walking, she said, "Well, yeah. Okay," and climbed on.
Going to the grocery store suddenly became the thing to do. You would think people were stocking up on water and batteries to weather whatever could come next, but most people I saw were buying brownie mix, beer, and rotisserie chicken. I used this particular trip to the store to buy potatoes to make gnocchi. Because if ever there's something to make when you have oodles of time on your hands to do something tedious, you might as well make 6 1/2-inch wide dough ropes and cut them into inch-long bits to resemble something like tiny pillows.
