Of Maine’s annual seasons, winter still is one of my favorites. Winters in present time feel tame, compared to the depths of snow I lived through while a “barn boy” during my teen years at Good Will Farm in the 1940s and early ’50s of the last century. Every boy in Winthrop Cottage did chores, morning and evening. Mine included tending the furnace at 05:00, hiking out to the snug barns back of Green Road, clearing the stalls and stuffing fresh hay into the mangers of nine big draft horses, harnessing one for a wagon of firewood or collecting trash at the boys’ campus. I’d zip back to my breakfast, drop my barn clothes, dress for school and run for Averill. “My” horse was Sandy, tall, sturdy, a brown mane and tail (neatly trimmed, by me). At harvest time, he nudged my jacket for an apple (and got one when I remembered).

“A World Without Ice,” by author Henry Pollack, Ph.D., has been available since 2009, but only lately discovered by this lifelong reader,  thanks to a recent review in the Sentinel. Dr. Pollack has patiently assembled millennia of evidence on the behavior and extent of our planet’s ice and water. Water in any form leaves evidence on our planet’s surface, -wet or dry in the moment, and the global evidence collected by Dr. Pollack is most convincing: all forms of life dependent on H2O are facing a future of (at present) water supplies steadily being mucked up, sucked up and obliterated, chiefly by our human race and at increasing speed.

Dr. Pollack justly shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. His book is very much worth your reading, your comprehension and your action in support of our planet.

Then go out and start planting trees. Arbor Day Foundation will give you a good start.

John Holt Willey

Waterville

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