Bring it on

Vegetation can cause snow-melting heat.

— Photo by Wing-Chi Poon

“Recent research has demonstrated that the {January} thaw is a reality and most frequently occurs between Jan. 20 and Jan. 26….Though the thaw does not come every year, it has put in an appearance often enough to establish its place as a singular factor of the New England climate.’’

-- From “The New England Weather Book’’ (1976), by David Ludlum and the editors of Blair & Ketchum’s Country Journal (RIP)

“ There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues.

—- Hal Borland (1900-1978), American nature writer. He spent most of his adult life living in Salisbury, Conn.

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“My sense of time seems to be melting, like a kid's snowman in a January thaw.’’

— Stephen King (born 1947), Maine-based novelist

1908 postcard

Salisbury, Conn., in the Litchfield Hills, has long been a favorite weekend refuge.

A sadistic month

“Anyone who lives in Boston knows that it’s March that’s cruelest, holding out a few days of false hope and then gleefully hitting you with the s@#t.’’

— Stephen King (born 1947), the Maine-based novelist, in his novel Dreamcatcher.

And stick around

“Hug and kiss whoever helped get you – financially, mentally, morally, emotionally – to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. It you’re too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don’t let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.’’ 

Stephen King (born 1947), hugely successful novelist, and a Maine native, in his University of Maine at Orono (the flagship campus of the university) commencement address in 2005.

And:

King has chosen to live in his native state for most of his life. His main home is in nearby Bangor. So he asked the graduates to stay in the Pine Tree State.

''This can be home if you want it to be. If you leave, you will miss it, so you might as well skip the going away part."

Stephen King’s house in Bangor, built in 1858

Good place to scare people from

Stephen King’s rather spooking-looking house in Bangor, Maine, one of many mansions built in the city during Bangor’s 19th Century heyday as a lumber center

“I think one of the reasons that Stephen King’s stories work so well is that he places his stories in spooky old New England, where a lot of American folk legends come from.’’

— Ted Naifeh, American comic-book author and illustrator

Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor