I'd love winter more if it played by my rules

Even at my “advanced” age, I don’t tire of winter from one year to the next. The blinding beauty of the landscape on a clear day after a snowstorm, the brisk temperatures, the chance to strap on snowshoes and break trail, the thrill of watching texting motorists spin off snow-covered roads at high rates of speed . . . it’s a glorious season for many reasons.

In fact, I don’t even mind shoveling, which helps to keep me in shape. (We don’t have a snowblower.) To me, shoveling is an always-welcome diversion from driving to the gym for exercise, because shoveling is a quiet and solitary pursuit that does not expose me to muscle-bound narcissists grunting their way through noisy weight-lifting routines.

But the storm we got here in Maine last weekend, which began Saturday afternoon and continued well into Sunday night, reminded me that shoveling has its downside. That’s because my idealized vision of winter involves clearing off the sidewalks, the driveway, the dog walking trail through the backyard and the path out to the chicken coop once or twice after a fast-moving storm . . . not over and over and over and over again, ad nauseam, like my own hellish remake of Groundhog Day.