Up here in Maine snow days catch us by surprise and render everything paused for a moment. Even though they may be contemplated and discussed the night before you really have to wait until the actual moment to be rewarded with their surprise reality.

They generally start with waking up to a 5am phone call cancelling school which requires creeping stealthily into rooms to turn off alarms so that everyone can get a few extra hours of sleep. When the kids finally tumble downstairs bleary eyed I am met with questions of ‘no school?’ and ‘is it a snow day?’ There is a celebratory moment of a test missed or an extra day to complete some left over homework and then murmurings of what to do all day. It’s a day of lazy homemade breakfast not rushed bowls of cereal, PJ’s for as long as you like and an open agenda of what can be done. The regular routines of a typical day are thrown off; no one needs to go anywhere except maybe outside to shovel for a bit and the day is free to craft however you would like it.

Being confined to home for the whole day or at least until the plow guy gets to your driveway can sometimes seem endless and often by late afternoon the lament for summer has begun. We dream about swims in Great Pond, what we would be doing at camp at this time of day and how much longer and fuller the days are. At 7pm when it’s already been dark for a couple of hours and we feel like going to bed it’s hard to imagine that it is just time for EP to start. The pull of camp gets us through the cold wintry days.

Can you imagine what it would be like to have a snow day at Camp Runoia? Oh what fun we could have with all of our best summer friends. Skating on the lake, sledding on the hill down to the waterfront, cross country skiing around the fields and a campfire in the snow!

We will get through the long days of the Maine winter daydreaming about our ‘fine Maine days’ at camp.