Meter Reader in the Snow
The way we’ve got it worked out this year is this: Carol and Robin read the meters for six months in the warmer weather, and Gretchen and I read the meters for six months in the chill. The winter job is easier because nobody stops us to gab, we aren’t checking for ticks, and it isn’t one bit awkward clomping up onto somebody’s deck or whatever because nobody is around. Meters on homes which don’t leave a freezer running or need a sump pump may show no usage, as most homes are empty, but it’s best practice to check things anyway.
Walking the roads in three inches of pristine, soft snow, to read electricity meters earlier this month proved an absolute delight. Not that the job is significantly different than any other wintertime hike: lugging a clipboard and writing down a number every few minutes isn’t exactly digging ditches. But January is something special in the parts of Maine that are known for their summertime offerings. On some of this island’s roads, before I got there in mind to count the kilowatts, there were no tracks at all.
No, that’s not quite true. There were rabbit tracks, various sizes, and a mouse here and there dragging its little tail, and cats stepping neatly in their own pawprints.
On the south end of the island, while walking a narrow path between a couple of small rental camps hidden back in the woods, a snowy owl flew from behind my left shoulder, silently passed by me as it drifted across the remote field nearby. It settled high in a spruce tree.
With few humans in residence this month, even including those part-timers who outrank the likes of us who are present and accounted for in terms of their authenticity and birthright (just ask them, they’ll tell you,) some of the island’s roads had not been driven on since the snow fell.
When I came upon such a by-way in my appointed circuit, any of several intersections where one of the options had not been used yet by an islander afoot or on horseback (well, in a vehicle,) I almost hated to track up the velvety whiteness. I thought of skiers who love “first tracks,” and was glad to be outdoors in the morning. The action I was obligated to take felt akin to heedlessly tracking muddy galoshes across a fussy Auntie’s expensive carpet.
This was not a deep snow, thankfully. Deep snow creates work. Somebody has get up and plow, and at least open up the airstrip. A couple of fluffy inches just blankets mud and dead grass, tires tracks, yard junk, and the ubiquitous little snippets of rope as common in the street dust as the pebbles of granite. It does little else, and it causes nobody here any trouble. Our city looked like a Christmas card.
In front of Asa the roofer’s house was the unmistakable evidence of a raptor’s breakfast and a bunny’s last hop. Rabbit tracks came from somewhere in the trees, curving around the dooryard until a flurry of disorder smudged the neat pawprint trail. There, large wing-prints, a raptor’s feathers distinct in the snow, made clear why the rabbit track ended. Snow angel of death, if I may be so dark. Raptors gotta eat, too.
The default condition of weather in the off-season, as they call it, is seemingly ceaseless wind, whether “brisk” or “blustery” or “another screeching gale,” insert coarse oath of your choice. I assume you know this about Matinicus Island already. But on meter-reading day in the middle of January, the wind happened to be light, almost calm.
The potential wrecking-ball ocean to the north and south and west, as I approached each edge of our little continent, twinkled benignly. In the winter such water is oddly tempting, the most minimal of wavelets lapping on smooth cobbles making quiet slurps like milk on cereal.
I went to Monhegan once this time of year, maybe 15 years ago, in a severe cold snap akin to what we had last week. I was visiting overnight to interview the teacher, and I remember thinking how many thousands of summer visitors who say Monhegan is “pretty” have never, and will likely never, see this beauty. That island, our neighbor, was settled into that rare winter quiet when the wind is subdued, the roaring sea takes a break, and the human sounds are muffled by a layer of snow. I remember feeling extraordinarily privileged to be there.