Meteorologist Charlie Lopresti told us Monday night: “Stay off the roads. Stay home and stay safe.” When Charlie speaks, I listen. I hunkered down.

We laid in candles, batteries, jugs of water, cat food and canned beans in case we lose power. Because I prefer to be a glass-half-full kind of Mainer and hope not to have to use a can opener today, I am baking beans!

I dig out my trusty “All Maine Cooking” cookbook for the recipe for Maine Baked Beans: dried beans, molasses, brown sugar, mustard powder, a sliced onion and a “scant” half-pound of salt pork. As I add water from the tap to the pot containing the pound of dried beans, I glance out my kitchen window. A blizzard for sure.

I can see the pine trees planted in our back forty, but not the woods beyond. The snow swirls and the wind blusters. I watch a red cardinal dig for seed in the tray feeder and notice a downy woodpecker at the suet. I feel for the birds and other creatures who must brave this storm outside while I am cozy indoors.

While the beans cook and I hope for the electricity to stay on, I hunker down. A pair of mittens to knit for my mother, a book to finish, a jigsaw puzzle to solve on my Kindle: I have much to help pass this day inside. Two geriatric cats to keep me company and a husband, too. Oh, I almost forgot: a dependable plow guy! What more could a Maine woman ask for?

I know snowstorms. I grew up in Aroostook County where, in the ’60s, we measured snow by feet, not by inches. When it snowed there, we still went to school, bundled up in snow pants and boots and hats, looking like the Michelin man, waddling deliberately down the road toward school. All that snow would eventually provide hours of entertainment as we built snow forts and snowmen and threw snowballs at each other. Our noses turned red and dripped like the syrup that would come in March, and we wouldn’t go inside until our mothers called us in for lunch.

These days we have scientific predictions many days ahead of weather events, which sometimes don’t even happen.

In days gone by, we looked to the sky and smelled the air to foretell a storm. Yes, the air has a certain smell when snow is coming. I wonder which is better? The certainty that comes with scientific predictions, or the anticipation of a possible event?

These days we get ramped up by the media, heading like sheep to the grocery stores to prepare for the worst. In those days, we just accepted that at some point in the winter, it would snow. And we would deal with it, hunkered down in warm houses, anticipating the snowmen we would build when the storm passed.

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