Almost three decades ago my kids and I came to Vermont in search of a better life. My son had come earlier in his old Datsun pickup after college let out, but I needed to pack up our house and finish up what would be my last year of teaching public school art in Missouri. My 11-year-old daughter and I, along with Molly, our black and brown husky; our orange cat Fuzzman; our gerbil Ralph; my Martin guitar, and our tent and camping gear filled our Saturn wagon. Saying goodbye to the old limestone hills along the meandering Mississippi, we headed northeast to Vermont. Deep and forested green mountains lifted high through tectonic orogenies, seemed like the cover of a camping catalogue.

I found my sort of paradise here, a place where even old people — not beaten down by the interminable heat and humidity of living near the Great River — loved being outdoors. Volunteers ran a rope tow from an old tractor motor on Saturdays so the kids could ski. Little ones at the local school slid down the hill on their bottoms during recess. At my old school, kids were kept inside if there was any “weather.” By February in Vermont, folks were out into the maple woods to gather sap. How sweet was that smoke from the sugar house.

Vermont got a lot of snow in those days — one March, a foot of snow fell every Friday. I remember this because I was volunteering at our community gathering place, called the Full Moon Café. I often housed the musicians who had driven here from Massachusetts or New York for the Friday Night Coffee House Series. Every gathering that March was cancelled from impassable roads and downed power lines, and that was the end of our little café, which never made enough money to stand on its own. The poor musicians drove home on Saturdays promising never to book a winter concert in Vermont again.

My Mediterranean husband cried while shoveling out the front of the house to prevent the snow from breaking our windows. He claimed he was not genetically fit for this kind of thing. Drifts over the windows were hard on us all, but losing our community gathering place was the real tragedy.

I had always wanted to learn how to ski, so I found some old woodies at the Ladies’ United Church of Strafford rummage sale — the kind that had three-pin bindings for boots as flimsy as dancing flats. I read a book on waxing skis and on proper form. I melted tar to the bottoms of our skis with a blow torch. My daughter, with her tiny dancer’s body, took to skiing naturally, however, my son, who was seven years older, fell. Once, after struggling to get up while trying to cross over a barbed wire fence, he looked up at me and said, “Mom, are you telling me people find this fun?” He would later fall in love with skiing the buttes out west with his border collie, Hayden.

This winter has been like those old winters — a good snow every week. After shoveling the driveway, I go skiing with the dogs, then I come home and shovel the driveway again. My skiing equipment has advanced to store-bought gear with substantial boots one could never dance in.

As for the loss of our community café, we have never replaced it, but we do fill that void with gatherings. Just this month, in addition to the town’s informational gathering on Town Meeting; I’ve hung out at Coburn’s, our now infamous general store where one goes to hear the news around town while buying organic maple milk; I volunteered at our Saturday recycling center, which could be called the Saturday Social Club; I attended an intergenerational gathering at Barrett Hall to help look for solutions for our housing inequality; I attended a dinner and book reading at Barrett Hall; and a bit north of here, participated in three days of singing with Village Harmony.

That is a lot of community. I am feeling blessed at all this beautiful snow, skiing through the woods, over boulders and fallen trees, but mostly I am feeling blessed at living right here.

Micki Colbeck is a naturalist and writer who chairs the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.