2026 Life Logs, Day 55: Snow Recovery Day
Date: Monday, February 24, 2026
Weather: Sorm Over, Beautiful Day; High Temp 33, Low 19 degrees F
Location: Back Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Last night on my last trip out with Shadow, I took a photo of the glistening snow down the driveway. When I went inside and looked at the photos I had taken, I noticed something I had not seen earlier. There are two very tall evergreens down by my mailbox and one of them was minus its top. The top was on the ground in the driveway.Obviously, the heavy snow had gotten to be too much.

But with that one exception, Shadow and I weathered the storm in style with heat and internet and cable TV, all the things many people in Falmouth didn’t have. I woke up early to bright sunshine and a clear deep blue sky. It was gorgeous outside.

My neighbor Andy arrived with his snowplow first thing, clearing a path for Shadow and I out to the road. Shadow was ecstatic, jumping up from the path to walk on the snow. On one side of the driveway, he fell through. But on the other side, he quickly learned that he could walk on the snow. He frolicked and ran and frolicked some more. Obviously, the path to road gave him the same sense of freedom it gave me. We were no longer trapped in our snow cave. Thank you, thank you, thank you to my neighbor Andy.

I did some shoveling, worked to check things off that never ending to do list, shoveled some more, and then went over to shovel off my car in Andy’s driveway. He was actually doing just that when I arrived. He was very carefully using a snow scraper to clean off the roof of my car. I grabbed a snow shovel and finished the job in a couple of seconds! Snow shovels these days have plastic guards on their edges and make great car scrapers. We finished that job and talked about the one remaining problem. He had cleared his driveway and the driveway of many neighbors today with his snow blower, but the more than two-foot wall of ice and snow that the snowplows had left blocking the entrance to his driveway was still there . He had tried to use his snowplow to get rid of it, but the pile was just too icy. I made him promise to leave it there until the guy comes tomorrow to plow my driveway. I said I would get him to do it. I went home and not even an hour later, I got a text from Andy saying the job was done. Neighbors, whose driveways he had cleared in the morning, had come to the rescue. An unlikely coalition of folks; a middle school art teacher, my neighbor on one side who is a Delta pilot, my neighbor on the other side who manages an online Cape Cod magazine. Of the four of them, I know for certain that two of them are stanch conservative Republicans, and I suspect the other two are progressive Democrats. How wonderful that those differences can be put aside to work together to get things done.

Then that euphoria of people working together for the common good was totally obliterated tonight when I watched the State of the Union spectacle. Promoting division seemed to me the core aim of the speech, along with way too much blood and gore. What kind of vicious, wicked person gives a speech like that?

Then one last thing. After the speech when I checked my phone, I saw a Facebook post by my daughter that made me so proud of her and the work she does for this community. “This is a storm for the books. As the sun was setting, just half of roads cleared, ~150 trees down in roadways, and 78% of households without power in Falmouth. This is not for want of trying. Town, contract, and Eversource crews are working as hard as they can, and I hope we can all remember that and be grateful even when the end result isn’t what we’d like. We have power, so if you need a warm place to stay tonight, let me know. There’s more info on resources in the release.”

FALMOUTHMA.GOV
Storm Recovery Updates • Falmouth, MA
Town of Falmouth Public Works and Public Safety personnel have been working non-stop to clear the roadways. At present, approximately 50% of the roadways have been cleared. Eversource is reporting 78% of properties are without power at this time.