Groundhog Day

Today we celebrate the weather forecasting abilities of a rodent who should still be slumbering the winter away... Groundhogs usually hibernate until late March.  And we wonder why people in other countries think Americans are weird?

Photo by Fox News on Feb 2, 2018

Our most celebrated groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, saw his shadow on this sunny Pennsylvania morning (or at least it's sunny right now here in Mount Savage on the Maryland/Pennsylvania border) forecasting 6 more weeks of winter.  My first thought was "Ugh! Winter... I hope he's wrong."  Then I started to wonder how often he actually is right.  According to livescience.com, Phil isn't very good at his job.  He's wrong even more than the TV weatherman, the one we curse for being so often wrong, with an accurate prediction of spring weather's arrival just 39% of the time.  That's worse than the 50/50 odds of flipping a coin!

But back to reveling in our oddity... According to legend, if our furry little rodent friend casts a shadow on February 2nd you should expect another 6 weeks of winter weather.  If there's no shadow, then you'll experience spring-like conditions.  Records of his predictions date back to the 1880s when German settlers meshed their Candlemas Day festivities with Native beliefs but it only gained great notoriety following the release of Bill Murray's 1993 comedy movie, Groundhog Day, where he plays a weatherman reliving the day over and over again.  Now thousands of people come from all over the country to this small town in Pennsylvania to gather on Gobbler's Knob and watch as poor Phil is pulled from his warm den to tell us when to expect Spring.  Interestingly, like many of our modern holidays, Groundhog Day is a meshing of ancient Pagan festivities with the beliefs of a local culture which was then Americanized as people left the Motherland in search of safety and/or prosperity.  Candlemas Day has roots in the Pagan holy day of Imbolc which marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.  Superstition held that if the day was sunny and bright, the second half of winter would be stormy and cold.  For early European Christians, it became customary to celebrate Candlemas Day by having a priest bless candles and distribute them to the community so a lit candle decorated a window of each home as a symbol of light overtaking dark just as the days began to lengthen.  Literally, it was a Candle Mass.  Some of the rhymes to help people remember this have also been saved, too.

In Old English...
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

And from Scotland...
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be two winters in the year.

Germany...
For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day,
So far will the snow swirl until May.
For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day,
So far will the sun shine before May.

And, the early American twist...
If the sun shines on Groundhog Day;
Half the fuel and half the hay.

People who lived in rural areas not near enough to a church to participate in formal Candlemas Day celebrations marked the day by watching wild animals and whether or not they cast a shadow.  For Germans, it was a badger.  So, after they immigrated to America, the groundhog served as a replacement.  Woodchuck, which is how groundhogs are known locally, comes from the native Deleware word "wojak" and is important to the Tribe's creation beliefs.  According to the Deleware, woodchucks represent their ancestors from the time before they emerged from Mother Earth to live and hunt as humans.  They are descendants of the woodchuck.

And now you know what you're really celebrating... a mashup of weather predictions of Native ancestors on an old German holiday that's based on even older Pagan observances of solstices and equinoxes.

Can you get any more American?

What I Love About Winter

Accuweather's 10-day forecast for Mount Savage, MD
on Dec 30, 2017

Has your skin turned blue... are you frozen through and through?  Oh, baby, it's cold outside! But I'm trying to stay positive this chilly night before New Year’s Eve and find some things to make winter seem more like an old friend than such an evil intruder throwing a wrench into whatever I have planned.

What I love most about winter:

Sweats are fashionable

Hot cocoa

Crockpots full of simmering soup

Guessing at animal footprints after fresh snowfall

A crackling fire in the fireplace

Fuzzy socks

Little kids stuffed into puffy coats 'til they can barely walk
Snuggly puppies
Electric blanket (or electric mattress pad so it's warm from below)
Ice cold water from the tap
Chicken pot pie
Fluffy bathrobes
Hot spiced cider
Looking at seed catalogs & dreaming of spring gardens
Watching kids sled down a hillside
Colorful birds flitting about in bare tree branches
Lasagna
The way falling snow makes it look like you're inside a snowglobe
Catching snowflakes on your tongue
Steaming bowls of chili
Being covered in the afghan you're crocheting
Daydreaming about a Hawaiian vacation
Dogs with crazy sweaters
Slathering butter on bread right from the oven
Videos of dogs learning to walk in their new booties
Binge watching Hallmark movies
Rolling the "r" when you say brrrrr...
Cute boots (and cute hats and mittens and scarves, too)
All kinds of apple desserts
Fondling the Christmas decorations as  you  put them away


And probably my very favorite... Complaining about the cold!

The Rock Piles of Appalachia

One of the more charming aspects of living in Appalachia are the stories. When I first heard John Denver sing that "...life is old there" (Country Roads, 1971) it was a truth I didn't have the means to appreciate. Yet. I'm learning that now through the sights and sounds and tastes and endless stories.

Everything has a story here... even the rock piles.

Most often the ones I see have a logical and evident explanation. They've been chiseled and then dry stacked as fences, retaining walls, foundations, stairs, road surfaces and structures. The early American settlers were surely not strangers to hard physical work. Think what it took to heft some of those stones into place even using cantalever!

A partially collapsed retaining wall. These are holding back terraces
which demarcate property lines on the downward side of a hill in
Mount Savage, MD.  If only it were mine... I would love to restore
this charming feature!

The old springhouse on the same property.  Time and neglect and [effective
though historically insensitive] rennovations have left it ravaged almost
beyond repair but how I would like to try...

You might be wondering what a "springhouse" is. I'm going to call it a necessity of both early American life and for those seeking a self-sufficient lifestyle not so tied to today's utility grid. The most basic purpose of a springhouse is to cover a spring with a simple, usually just one room, structure to keep the water clean and potable. It keeps out fallen leaves and animals that could introduce infectious bacteria to the water source. The cold water and stone construction keep a springhouse cool year round so it also provides refrigeration to store foods like cured meats, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products safely away from predators.

And then sometimes you randomly find a huge pile of stacked rocks out in the middle of the forest.  It's neat and ordered and shows intelligent design in its construction. It just doesn't make sense in context of its location. At least not with how the locale is used today. And since Appalachia has been continually populated by uncounted cultures for thousands of years we are left to speculate about the purpose these rocks served and any meanings attributed to them in the distant past. Couple that with a landscape that holds onto the secrets of what may hide deep within its volcanic ancient history...

This example is near Spruceton NY. I found it in this 2008 blogpost from
Rock Piles. They refer to them as cairns, which to me suggests
a burial site.  Perhaps?  It makes for a good story!

And there you have mystery and intrigue... essential ingredients to any good story!

Were these stones laid by some of America's first inhabitants? Perhaps they are altars of worship like The Book of Mormon describes... or trail markers, or defense structures in an ancient war, or hunting blinds maybe? Along with the equally mysterious stone circles (like Scotland's Stonehenge and the smaller less well known circles here in Appalachia) are they evidence of an ancient alien presence? Are they just stones cleared from the fields of a farm that has been reclaimed by nature? The answer, and the story, depends on who you ask!

I would say many of the less easily explained rock piles come from preparing a field for planting crops. Stones were removed to make it possible for the farmer to work his field and produce a crop. They were stacked somewhere out of the way. Most of us who grew up on or around farms or in families that gardened are familiar with the process and have likely spent some time "pickin' rock."  That familiarity tugs at the heartstrings... These rocks remind us that there's something both comforting and disturbing about the temporary nature of our time on Earth. This is work that's as important as it is fleeting... What once served as a family's livelihood is reduced to nothing more than a few tons of stone... and a mystery for future generations to wonder about.