Echoes magazine celebrates winter, Aroostook women

    Some people grumble when winter arrives. Others marvel at the glistening beauty of the transformed landscape. They might sharpen their ice skates, or remember when they did, enjoy a walk on a trail lined with flocked trees or roll yarn into balls for knitting mittens.
    People in the second category found their way onto the pages of the new Echoes magazine, released this month. A letter about ice skating from Susanne Thompson Hay of Mapleton and a book titled “Twelve Kinds of Ice” by Ellen Bryan Obed inspired the choice of a cover photo by Michael Gudreau of Presque Isle; a pair of skates and an old red sled, just waiting for the fun they represent.
    Echoes No. 99 celebrates not only the joys and challenges of northern winters, but also the strength and ingenuity of Aroostook County women of all ages. Glenna Johnson Smith, at 92, remembers the optimistic women who inspired her when she first moved to Aroostook County as a young bride in 1941.
    “I couldn’t imagine women so strong, so healthy, so energetic,” Smith writes. “They laughed so much I had to believe they were having fun no matter how hard they worked.”
    Betty Yeomans Pickering of Bangor and Florida gains new insight on her mother’s character in telling the story of Ruth Yeomans’ exhausting walk through a blizzard to fulfill her responsibility as the Postmaster of Wytopitlock.
    “Mother’s snowstorm story is more than a tale of dedication, bravery and triumph over winter’s worst,” she writes.
    Marry Warren of Fort Fairfield tells of a recent blizzard that caused Can-Am sled dog racers to lose the trail. New to Aroostook County, Mary was a volunteer timer at the Allagash checkpoint where mushers competing in the 250-mile race were required to stop.
    “These were people who really cared about one another,” she recalled, describing the camaraderie that left her feeling “a part of something so much greater than myself — that sense of community we all crave.”
    Pamela Snow Sweetser of Presque Isle takes readers into the lives of women living in Aroostook County between 1890 and 1940, using their diaries to show how social networking before smart phones was transformed by new forms of transportation, especially the automobile.
    Focused on the adult life of Amy Sweetser, a relative of Pam’s husband, “Singing at Funerals” also documents ways women earned wages, while “running households, raising children and social networking.”
    Two Aroostook County women see the value in passing on their knitting skills to future generations and share instructions for their favorite mittens in Echoes 99. Shirley Leighton Orr grew up on a potato farm in Limestone, and still knits mittens, even though she now lives in Florida. She found her favorite pattern for a “Fisherman’s Wet Mitten” in a magazine in 1983 and decided to pass it on through another magazine.
    Washburn native Kristine Bull Bondeson learned from her mother how to knit the Scandinavian way and writes: “Every time I teach someone to knit, I think to myself: I am passing along know-how of a craft that stretches back through centuries.” Bondeson also shares two of her mitten patterns in Echoes.
    As winter turns into spring, Dorothy Hopkins of Wallagrass takes her two Newfoundland dogs and a beagle out for a walk on tree-lined trails. When they return, their foot and paw prints are black with a sure sign of spring: snow fleas. Her essay “The Turning of Winter” contains fascinating scientific information about snow fleas and other life forms.
    As so, Echoes 99, closes with the promise of spring amid the beauty of winter. Other features include an analysis of how bread lost its nutrients by Gordon Hammond, Part 13 of a memoir by former Peace Corps volunteer Roger Parent of Lille, an essay by Ron Laing on the value of old photos, and regular columns by John Dombek, Glenna Smith, Dottie Hutchins, Lucy Leaf and Kathryn Olmstead.
    Echoes is published quarterly by Echoes Press, Inc., and printed at Print Works in Presque Isle. It is available by subscription and on newsstands in northern Maine.
    Dedicated to rediscovering community, the magazine will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2013. Visit www.echoesofmaine.com.