Rock Salt Journal

Editor's Note

I drove to Burlington, Vermont a few weeks ago to enjoy a long weekend. It was raining when I left Maine. The ground was muddy green and evidently, deep into the beginnings of spring. As I crossed from New Hampshire into Vermont, the rain turned to sleet and then snow. Soon, I couldn’t see more than a hundred feet in any direction. The asphalt itself disappeared. For the next four hours I drove with white blindness, tires carefully in line with the deep ruts in the drifted snow. Every few minutes my hands would wobble, and for a terrifying second or two, the truck would fishtail before returning again to the safety of the ruts. I passed signs that listed the minimum speed as forty-five. I was doing twenty-nine. Luckily, I wasn’t arrested for my negligence.

The following Monday I returned to Maine, and sure enough, there wasn’t a flake of snow about. It seemed the region hadn’t agreed upon the season, so there’d been a compromise. Maine and half of New Hampshire continued on towards summer, while the other half of the granite state joined Vermont in total white-out.

Sometimes I worry that Rock Salt’s New England focus is too narrow, too restrained, a journal about a collection of identical rocky cold states, but I’m reminded now of New England’s largeness. Largeness in land area, yes, but also weather, and scenery, and characters. That weekend, Vermonters were surely living different lives than Bostonians. No one had to shovel out the stalls of Quincy Market or wedge themselves into the front seat of a salt truck and trail a plow up 95.

There aren’t many snowstorms in the following stories, but there are plenty of New England characters, each as different from the next as Burlington and York on March 12th, 2022. I hope you stick around and meet every one. Thank you for reading and see you in October.

— J.B. Marlow, Editor