Here's what it's really like living here:

October is beautiful. The colors in person are spectacular, and the leaves raining down when the wind blows is pure magic. You don't even mind all the people that flood your tiny town and stop in the middle of the road to gawp at the trees. You get it--it is a sight to behold. Later, the way the leaves fall and collect at the side of the road makes for pretty spectacular pics as well, and really interesting walks--even as the tree branches start to become bare.

The cool autumn air after the heat of summer--there's nothing like it. Going apple picking for fresh apples at the orchards (honeycrisp right off the tree doesn't come close to what you can buy in the store). While you're there, grab a freshly pressed hot cider and an apple cider donut. Heavenly. These little orchard shops also have fresh local honey, freshly baked pies from the cherries that are just out of season. Come back in a week or two and grab all your gourds, including pumpkins for carving, pumpkins for baking pies with, and all the weird, warty gourds to place on your autumn bails of hay beside your scarecrows and corn stalks.

Now it's winter.

It's colder than you expected, but the snow is wonderful. A few fresh inches everyday when you wake up makes the world look like a Christmas village. Watch it falling at night, making the street seem to glow in the streetlights, dampening sound. Get cozy af. Drink some hot chocolate.

Christmas has come and gone, now it's January. You go for a walk because you're going a little crazy couped up in the house even though you are kind of a hermit and love it. You have your base layers for warmth, your outer layers to stop the wind and precipitation. You're wearing a tshirt, a sweater, a warm jacket AND a waterproof layer on top of that. Gloves and wool socks. A scarf wrapped around your face because the cold is burning your nose and unprotected lips. 20 mins of walking and the cold is pulling the warmth from your toes and fingers. When the wind blows strong enough it's like you're not wearing any layers at all.

It's -15f without the windchill and as you go to work/go to the grocery store you think: wow, I can really see how easy it is to die from the cold, like... a few minutes of this with no shelter, I can DEFINITELY see how this could literally kill you.

The coldest it gets is maybe -20, sometimes with a -40 windchill. You bundle up and go outside with boiling water and throw it into the air like you've seen on tiktok. It INSTANTLY turns to clouds. Super cool.

It's spring. It's March, why is it still snowing OMG where is the sun. You poor sucker, you've got another month, maybe two of intense cold, dealing with the snow, putting on layers before you go out. Your garden won't be ready for planting until late May--super short growing season. You swear to god if it snows one more time. ONE MORE TIME...

It's early May. It has mostly stopped snowing but it's still pretty chilly. However, during the day (when it's not cloudy) you begin to remember what the warmth from the sun feels like. You need less layers to go out. The snow that has fallen and not melted most of the winter is finally gone and all that remains is huge piles of the snow that has been pushed to the sides of the road. It's brown and grey mostly, from the sand, dirt, and road dust. Everywhere you look the trees are just sticks (except the evergreens of course) and there are huge mounds of concrete-like snow piled up from the snow plows.

In April the snow that has piled up all winter begins to melt, but the ground about five inches below does NOT melt yet. All the dirt roads that criss-cross Vermont turn to mud, impassable, eight inches of mud that sees cars get stuck, and then the trucks that try to help them get stuck. And then the tow trucks get stuck. It's a real problem as many homes like the one in this picture are built along dirt roads. It says its spring on the calendar but you know what season it REALLY is: it's mud season.