“Yeah sorry we fucked the planet and you’ll never see snow like this, but you should see my 401k.”

I do remember. I remember the snow tunnels after. They were awesome.

I remember a big snow year in the 80’s when I was a teen. My buddy and I skied the woods between the Glades and Cliff Trail which were marked as a closed area at that tine. The powder was between knee an thigh deep, and neither of us had skied in deep snow like that before. I skied down into a little creek bed and heard a yell behind me. My buddy was nowhere to be seen but I could hear muffled screams. I tried to side step to him, but the snow made it impossible, so I popped my skis off and immediately sunk to my waist. I muscled and swam to get out of that little creek, and found him upside down in a tree well with only his ski tails visible. Fortunately, he could breathe, but he was totally stuck. Luckily, I managed to get his skis off, and dig him out. Neither of us realized how much danger we were in.

I’ve never seen conditions like that on Mansfield since. According to the records, the 80’s weren’t close to the really big record years, so I can’t even imagine what those must have been like.

I remember it well. Partly because my brother and I had to shovel the driveway and the walks. Several times. Gives you a different perspective on Winter Wonderland.

We had a big parking spot at the top of our driveway. They plowed up all of the snow into one tall bank on the downhill side, and one on the uphill side. We would climb the bank on the uphill side with our sleds, and sled down the hill. But the bank there was too big on the downhill side that winter, and that ruined it.

So some of the older kids dug a long tunnel up through the lower snowbank. On the uphill side, we make it like a bob sled run with walls. That way we would hit the tunnel. Then somebody sprayed the hose on it to ice it up. So we raced down the uphill bank, through the tunnel, and then down the long hill. It was about a half mile down. The adults would sometimes meet us with the snowmobiles and tow us around the field, back to the road and back to the top. Sometimes we had to walk over to the driveway and rode back up in the back of the pick up truck. I was 8 that winter.

It was Christmas time in Wilmington. All of the cousins were here and staying at my grandmother's house. The snow was up to the kitchen window. The drift here led to the top of our regular sledding hill. There were 9 cousins and some neighbors, so maybe 15 or 18 kids, and about 6 dogs.

We would bring our sleds into the kitchen, and my dad or uncle would lift the kid into the sled. Then down we went, with a dog chasing us. There were two windows, and after a while, we raced each other. Grandma sat there smoking cigarettes and sipping bourbon laughing at all the kids and sleds and dogs passing through her kitchen.

We got here early 70s—bitter cold decade. Tons o’ snow, no money so we shoveled everything ourselves incl steep driveway w killer curve at bottom, like a luge run. 80s & 90s were even snowier; we shoveled tons then too but began hiring plowmen. 2015 was ridiculous: 7’ thru season here and 9’ in Boston area, which is where I had to drive many days & months to help care for a dear old relative. Shoveling there was massive cuz the humidity made the snow heavy and I needed to carve out a parking space for my car in his apartment bldg parking lot—after dark. I had enuf to do on the living-level surfaces; when I skied it was x-c—I left the summits to the gods & still do. Happy trails in ’23

Too young here, but I do remember the ice storms the week of the challenger disaster and the big snowstorm in '93