It’s too good to be true, it’s so good it must be bad,  it’s another balmy, warm winter day. We walk outside and meet the smells, sounds, and gentle air of spring — it is early February, and the hard hand of winter should be twisting around us, pinching our faces, squeezing our fingertips to numb, slamming us down to the ground with patches of ice. Instead, we have cheerful birdsong, a soothing breeze, and the shmoosh of mud underfoot. I can hear running water in the distance. It is eerie and welcome, disturbing and delightful. This is New England without the pain of winter. It is unnaturally, dangerously delicious.

We come from reticent, stony, struggle-loving stock, and this is an indulgence that cannot be mentioned — there is remarkably little talk about the green grass where there should be snow. Ayup, crazy weather. Five months without long johns, boots without socks, the hat hasn’t seen action for weeks, and our entire system of survival lays dormant in the closet. The ice-scrapers, buckets of salt, tubes of sand, cords of wood, and trusty shovels stand ready and unused. The robins are here, the puddles ripple in the wind, and we are eyeing the soft ground for the first green blades of crocus. We look at each other and shrug, wondering what will become us of now, fearful of too much luxury.

We are saving money and losing money in huge numbers. The driveway has been plowed only once — a boon for the homeowner, a serious hit for the plow guy and his family. Legions of laborers used to swarm out after every storm, climbing to the roofs to clear the eaves, patrolling the neighborhoods with shovels and salt, lacing pathways of safety from the car to the door to the mailbox, making pocket money that was desperately needed. Not this year.

Plow drivers are the kings of the winter highway, steering massive, mastodon rigs that will crush you in your little tin-can car. The smaller, beat-up plows tend to the home front, rattling with rust and rumbling with a low, soothing purr. A Detroit engine with 200,000 plus loves the snow in a familiar driveway. Eager for the deepest snowbanks, it reverses and pushes in again, sweeping and lifting the snow in a cradle of power and control between old friends. We race to the second story when we hear, feel him turn into the driveway, we press to the window to watch the dance from above. But not this year.

This winter, these beautiful rigs are silent, their drivers are idle, and the eager men with roof rakes and shovels have nothing to do and no money to make through this strange, warm winter. Ski areas, and so many service industries, are empty when they need to be full. For heating oil suppliers, cordwood producers, knitters of hats, and makers of mittens, winter is an economic engine that won’t turn over and start. It is disorienting for humans, and all of nature is disrupted. Some populations of animals and plants are ready to explode into the warmth, while others are dwindling. A hard, cold winter is a good thing, it is part of the balance up here. I don't want to think about all that is lost, and the ticks proliferating in the warm winter woods. There is so much more about this winter warmth that we don’t want to think about.

This year, there are no snow-day blizzards with the family stuck inside, soup on the woodstove, knitting, reading, suiting up to go out into the gale to shovel and play. No snow forts dug out of driveway piles, no deep powder to fall into, no silent walks through the forest, following the tracks of animals like music across a perfect score. We miss the diamonds on the snow crust, flashing a million rainbow sparks in the sun. We miss the gripping, bracing air, charging the blood with challenge, filling the body with tingling, fiery life. We love the cold, we need the snow, the patterns of ice creeping through the night to delight us at dawn.

Spring is nice, but only after it has been earned. The icy grip of winter hasn’t crushed us with cold, so we can’t relax into the warmth. We are made of sterner stuff than this. We don’t know what this means, what it foretells, how deep the financial cuts will be, how our character and our futures will be changed. Is this a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or the beginning of the end as we know it? We leave the coat on the hook as we head out the door into another gentle day, wistful and confused, smiling at the sun and the songs of birds, smooshing through the mud but wishing instead for snow.