We’ve all had a month of trying to one-up one another with stories about just how awful was the storm and the week or so after it. And lots of us have resurrected tales of this or that Big Storm of the past. I recalled a story told to me by George Badgley, now in his mid-90s, who said the old timers of his boyhood used to shake their heads over the Big Storm of the ’70’s (i.e., 1870’s). That time the snow reached houses’ second stories, and farmers spent days tunneling out to their barns to feed and water livestock.

And they dug real tunnels, like the one in "The Great Escape." A boy or man, on hands and knees, scraped at the snow ahead of him, then passed a full bucket back to another, who dragged it backward and out of the tunnel. (I’m wondering what they did with that snow when they got it back to the house. Maybe it was carried upstairs and thrown out windows.)

And I’ve read accounts of earlier 19th-century storms that buried some houses completely. One story mourned a horse that had to be put down. Old Dobbin had been drawing a sleigh across the snow and broke a leg when he stepped down a chimney.

I haven’t seen that kind of storm, but I well remember the Big Snow of the early ’90s (that’s 1990’s, please). I had just moved up from Maryland. When I couldn’t get out my back door, I wondered just how disastrous a mistake I’d made, moving north. As I shoveled and shoveled, I hummed, "What kind of fool am I?"

And we’ve all been recalling the Great Storm of Christmas Day, 2002. That day the snow started falling in a whiteout around 1 p.m.; by six that evening all the county roads had been closed.

Portabello’s of Fly Creek had just started business the previous summer, and Anne and I had talked the Kantors into offering a big Christmas dinner there. We had pointed out that nowhere around here offered a meal that day.

As is their wonderful style, the Kantors had gone all out, with a menu of oysters Rockefeller, roast suckling pig, Cornish game hens, and endless side dishes and desserts. They’d advertised widely and booked a lot of reservations. But then the blizzard came. And then the roads closed.

On Christmas evening, Anne and I were determined to keep our own Portabello reservation; by seven, we’d snow-shoed the three-quarters of a mile to the restaurant. We were the first customers of the day, but soon were joined by Pastor Tom Pullyblank, who had slogged down from the parsonage, and then by a couple from Canada. Heading for Florida, the couple had plowed their car down Route 28, judging the snow as only a little worse than what they were used to.

The five of us turned out to be the Kantors’ whole Christmas Day clientele. As the pastor, Anne, and I finished our meal, Adam Kantor came out of the kitchen with a whole roasted pig on a tray. "Anyone want more pork?" he asked wistfully. "I have some left."

That Christmas 2002 storm had me marching the snow blower around our house more times that Joshua circled Jericho. But I just about matched that record on this Valentine’s Day; and so did many others, by their accounts. Of the many stories of snow-begotten mishaps and solutions that I’ve heard, let me share just two. The first is a solution, arrived at by the unsinkable Lady Ostapeck.

Lady, who is sojourning through her mid-80s, lives alone, up Fly Creek Valley. The snow and fierce wind put a tall drift right across her front door.

"I opened the door and just saw white!" she told me a few days later. But Lady, as we know, is dauntless. She knew her snow shovel was out there somewhere, a few yards from the door. And so she dug her way out of her house. With a saucepan.

The mishap that I’ll report occurred to Blue, our best and only dog. As I’ve told you, he loves the snow and found the storm and the aftermath an unqualified lark. The first few days he was plunging in and out of the white powder. Three days out, however, the snow had crusted over, and now he could walk its surface. He soon realized that if he forgot himself and started to romp, he’d break through and drop right out of sight.

One morning he accompanied me out toward the barn, I walking the steep-walled path that I’d snow-blown, he trotting lightly along the top of the snow, at about bicep height to me. He was delighted at this gain in stature and kept nosing my arm for pats.

Halfway down the pathway, the dog felt nature call and veered west across the snow crust to the tree line, a favorite spot for unburdening himself. I watched as he arrived over there, circled twice to find the right place, then gathered his four paws together in a classic squat. Bad mistake.

Blue’s four feet, gathered like that, concentrated his 50 pounds on the one spot. Just as he was shifting into low gear, the snow crust broke, and squatting dog dropped as if through a trapdoor. My mouth fell open. Only Blue’s head showed above the snow, nose pointing upward. As I watched, he flailed wildly to get up and onto the snow. Then he walked gingerly across to the fence and completed, ever so carefully, what he had begun.

I stepped into the barn to do my laughing. It would have been unkind, indelicate, to do it to his face.

Read about Jim Atwell’s new book, "From Fly Creek _ Celebrating Life in Leatherstocking Country" at www.JimAtwell.com.