1907
Jan'y 28
Bethel, Maine
  The winter snow storms in this region are
seldom accompanied by much wind. In the woods 
the snow-flakes, whether large and moist or small
and dry, fall nearly straight, lodging in thick
masses or lines of delicate, powder tracery on the
branches and twigs of the trees. The heavier storms
are usually followed closely by violent north-west
winds which soon strip the trees and send the 
snow whirling and eddying in mist-like wreaths
to new and often distant resting places. In
deciduous woods and among evergreens with crowded
tops and scant under foliage most of the snow sifts
down to the ground and is evenly distributed there
remaining later into the spring than it does in exposed
wind-swept fields and pastures. But under dense,
vigorous, low-branching spruces and balsams which
grow in sheltered places in the woods either apart
from other trees or surrounded by those which possess
no foliage in winter the snow seldom accumulates
to any considerable depth, even after the heaviest
storms. Beneath such trees one may occasionally find
small patches of bare ground in midwinter and in
early spring the entire circular space beneath the
drooping lower branches is often quite free from snow
when but little if any of the surface of the earth in
the open country has been as yet revealed. When I 
was in Bethel in March, 1904, the first Song Sparrows
on arriving from the South appeared in the depths
of the woods under trees such as those above described.
I have never known this to happen in Massachusetts when
in early spring the snow invariably lies deeper and later
beneath dense evergreens than on open slopes & ridges.