Winter Storm Turns to Spring

By Gen Morley 
(Children’s Program Director)  

The largest storm of the season was just a few weeks ago on Sunday March 6th, 2011. Big, heavy flakes fell steadily into the next afternoon. Snowfall rate was about 2-3 inches an hour and total accumulation at The Tyler Place was near 20 inches. Snowdrifts created by the lake winds came to over four feet in places.

Most winters our maintenance staff spends some serious time out in the Vermont snow and cold. The guys know to be ready each morning for a full day of work outside. There are days they spend on remodels and repairs inside, but the weather often dictates a day’s work. I came upon the crew one sunny, but intensely frigid day, while they were clearing off cottage rooftops. Commonplace here, but certainly not so in most of the country, roof tops that don’t clear themselves have to be cleared by hand because accumulations of snow of several feet or more simply weigh too much for the structures to support for very long. 

The day I met up with the guys, temperatures were in the teens even without considering the wind-chill coming off Lake Champlain this time of year. Despite my heavy winter boots, a down coat, and decent pair of gloves, it was very cold out there. The guys were just fine. I managed to get some good winter photos of the roof clearing process for everyone to check out before the process digressed into a snowball fight. Working outside in the Vermont winter has its perks.

At this point, the snow has pretty much melted away, leaving the ground moist and ready for the spring green to move in behind it. It’s amazing how quickly the seasons change around here; we all look forward to that, largely because it means we are that much closer to the 2011 Tyler Place season. With the approach of the upcoming season comes the anticipation of making new friends with guests and staff alike, and seeing all of our old friends from many years gone by.

Back of the Inn

 Nature Dave & Lachlan Tyler         Geoff Tyler, Tyrell &Nature Dave

Tyrell                                                       Blake

Reflections from a T.P. Childhood in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s Winter (#4)

By Ted Tyler

Come spring (the ice usually went out about April 20^th or so) there was often a contest among my peers as to who had the courage to jump in the lake first.  The first sunny day after “ice out” we would gather at some good jumping-off place and egg each other on.  This has left me with great admiration for participants in polar bear clubs.  It’s a shocking experience.  My recollection is of hitting the water and almost running on it to get out again as quickly as possible.

(Conversely, at the other end of the year we tested the ice with every freeze – to see if it would hold our weight.  Often it wouldn’t, but as well as I can remember, no lives were lost.  For the most part we were sane enough not to test it where we would have been over our heads.)

“Ice out” on a river could be quite spectacular and a spectator event going back to my Grandfather’s day in Enosburg Falls (on the Missisquoi River) – and no doubt considerably prior to that.  At some point day or night the spring thaw would reach a tipping point, unleashing snow melt and taking the ice out with it.  Huge slabs of ice would float down, frequently snagging on a rock, bridge or other obstruction and creating ice jams behind which volumes of water would accumulate – until the pressure reached a point where water and ice roared down river once again.  Sometimes dangerous and destructive, but lots of fun to watch. 

“Ice out” on Missisquoi Bay was generally a less dramatic experience.  (Those in the know would have removed their ice shanties, generally by the end of March.  The two species fished in winter at our end of Lake Champlain were yellow perch and northern pike.)  The rivers, fed by snow melt, would open up first.  Channels in the ice would appear leading from the main mouths of the Missisquoi River, and increasingly from so-called Dead Creek, proximate to the T.P.  At some point a heavy west wind might coincide with the break up and the Old Stone Dock covered ten feet deep in crystalline, disintegrating ice.  Other years, one day the ice would still be there – and the next, gone.  Depending on snow accumulation in the mountains and weather conditions, high water occurred sometime in April or May – often six to eight feet above the summer/autumn low. Flotsam and jetsam – including the remains of duck blinds and fishing shanties unretrieved by their owners – washed ashore. The local fishing turned to bullpout by light at night at river outlets (Rock River bridge was and is a favored site).  At the very start of open water, woodducks and a couple of other locally nesting duck species examined suitable lakeshore tree cavities (we now supplement these with nest boxes). 

Previous to ice out came sugaring – usually starting in February – with “sugar bushes” with a southern exposure and lower altitude having the initial sap runs.  It was all buckets and horse teams then – no plastic piping. And the evaporators were all fired with wood.  My cousins and I tapped the many maples in the immediate vicinity of the Old Dock Road, the Kingfisher Bay and Point cottages south to Shipyard Bay and boiled the sap to syrup in wide pans over an open fire – which resulted in a product with a lot of ashes in it, but delicious nonetheless.

Winter in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s Winter (#3)

By Ted Tyler

Getting back to the lake, block ice for summer refrigeration purposes was a necessity in those days.  In rural areas such as ours, residential use was a small part of this endeavor, although the icebox was the sole kitchen cooling mechanism in the Vermont part of my life.  The major consumer by far was the dairy industry: Vermont’s 10,000 mainly small farms – ours was one – needed the ice to cool down and keep cool for preservation purposes its milk production.  For this purpose Missisquoi Farm had an ice house, cheek by jowl with the milking barn, located where the pool complex is now situated.  Midwinter each year ice was harvested perhaps 100 yards or so west of where the Tyler and Point cottages stand.  A hole was chiseled in the ice and then parallel cuts were made by saw by hand for 100 feet or so.  The saws were similar to crosscut saws and the standing joke was who got to saw from the underwater portion, but these saws had a handle just at one end and were a one man (per line of cut) proposition.  Once the horizontal cuts had been made, cross cuts followed, leaving rectangular chunks weighing 80 pounds or so.  These were pulled from the water with tongs and slid up a ramp onto a truck bed or other conveyance to the icehouse.  Our icehouse was a wooden insulated structure with a bed of sawdust.  The slabs of ice were layered in, one layer at a time, with more sawdust between and on top of each block until the icehouse was full.  Because of the insulation and the proximity of all that ice, even in the hottest August weather the ice remained intact as chunk by chunk it was removed, hosed down to remove the sawdust, and placed in the tank where the 44-quart milk cans were kept prior to transportation to the creamery in Swanton.  If you have fished in northern Quebec and Labrador, you would have seen such icehouses still in use – in places without electricity or where the cost of fossil fuels to produce it is prohibitively expensive.

The men who cut the ice were specialists and they wore cleats on their boots for good reason.  A film of water on ice is extremely slippery, and falling into 32 degree water in below zero weather with a wind blowing was no one’s idea of fun.  While I was watching this operation one winter, my cocker spaniel, Rexy, fell in.  Someone hauled Rexy out and I remember a run with the dog to the house to thaw him out. 

To be continued.

Winter in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s Winter (#2)

By Ted Tyler

In those days we probably had as many outdoor “picnics” in the winter as in the summer.  You can build a fire anywhere in snow (or even on the ice) if you know how to do it.   One of the greatest draws for such a cookout would occur when the rivers that flow into Missisquoi Bay froze over.  Perhaps it would be late December or early January, the ice conditions (except in spots in a protected place like Kingfisher Bay) poor because of snow cover or wind when the freeze occurred or a mixture of snow and freezing rain.  A cold snap, frigid enough to freeze the previously ice-free rivers (usually Rock River in our case), would occur.  We would pile onto a sled or sleds some newspaper, kindling, an axe or saw (dry wood could always be found on-site), a pot and something to cook in it.  Then off we would go, skating as many miles as we chose up the river, hauling anyone too young for the effort on sleds behind.  When the urge came a fire would be built, a stick or sticks or snag on a fallen log arranged from which to hang the pot over the fire – and voila, hot soup or stew or whatever provender we had.  (Advice for the inexperienced: don’t use metal cups or bowls to eat from.  They may be unbreakable, but you’ll burn the skin off your lips.)

The nostalgic odor of that hot soup on a cold day conjures up another family winter activity that has lasted to this day: Fox and Hounds.  The starting point for our version of this game was our house, and it was best played after a new snow.  One amongst us volunteered or was chosen by lot to be the fox, and off the fox trotted, burdened only by a small backpack with some newspaper, matches and a little kindling.  Probably most of you know how this goes: after a wait of 5 or 10 minutes to give the fox a fair head start, the hounds (in our case bearing a pot or two and some comestibles to heat therein) proceed to track Reynard.  Now the qualities required of our Reynard were a fair amount of agility and athleticism, as well as a guileful and somewhat devious mind.  In fresh snow it’s not easy to mislead a posse of trackers, but it can be done.  Backtracking carefully in one’s own footsteps to a place where there’s a bare rock close by – and then a jump (perhaps augmented by a sapling to grab and swing from) can slow the hounds down considerably.  Getting into a patch of neighboring trees and abandoning ground travel at all for a rod or two also works well.  Another gambit is walking around a large circle several times – making it difficult to spot where the fox departed the circle for parts unknown.  One way for the hounds to circumvent these tricks was to spread out in their pursuit – but this often created a problem for them: are these the fox’s footprints or one of my fellow hound’s – or maybe, my own?!  Note the fox spent as much time in the woods as possible – these subterfuges don’t work so well in an open field.

In any event, after a half mile or so the fox would pick a suitable secluded spot, gather some wood and get the picnic end of the proceedings underway by starting a (non-smoky) fire.  Sooner or later the hounds would show up, if only because they could smell the fire.

Fast forward some years to the next generation (we’re talking the sixties here).  I’m the fox.  My kids are the hounds.  After some of the tricks described above, I come back to the house on a cold winter’s day by another door from a different direction, pour myself some cocoa and watch out the window as my offspring struggle through waist-deep snow.  What a meanie!  And didn’t they let me know it!

To be continued.