An arching walking bridge and a layer of snow cover the Wesserunsett Stream near the historic Dudley Corner School House in Skowhegan in 2020. The area around the stream was a playground for Amy Calder in her youth. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Ah, life was so much simpler then.

In winter, we didn’t worry ourselves about whether it would rain or snow or be cold the next day. We didn’t pay attention to weather forecasts, crave up-to-the-minute news, check and recheck to see what’s happening, here and everywhere.

If we woke in the morning to a foot or two of snow, we shoveled the driveway, donned our warmest winter attire and headed to school. If it was raining, we grabbed a raincoat. Wind? Wrapped a scarf around our heads.

Yes, the 1960s were much different. In 2025, television, radio and social media have got us all wound up about weather, like it’s critical we know beforehand what will occur tonight or tomorrow, as if our lives depended on it.

I suppose if we were in California or North Carolina, we might see things differently, but when we were kids such disasters didn’t occur as frequently, and climate change wasn’t a known entity.

I’ve often thought that, when I retire, I’ll shut it all down — television, cellphone, radio — and just read newspapers, if there are any left.

I wouldn’t need to hear a weather report, unless a flight to Florida was on tap. I’d have lots more time to read books, listen to music, converse, take walks.

That’s what we did in Skowhegan in the ’60s. Whatever fun we had, we created. We produced plays in the barn and invited neighbors, trekked through the woods to the Wesserunsett Stream to swim, fish or take a cruise in the boat my brother Matt built, our black Newfoundland, Sam, paddling alongside us.

The boat sank but that was part of the thrill — and good fodder for a story to tell afterward.

We tramped through fields and forest, ate checkerberry leaves and spruce gum and took a rest on the porch of Matt’s cabin, a log house he built when he was a teenager with trees he cut down in my father’s woods. It was complete with a stone fireplace, little windows, shelves for canned goods and a cellar hole to keep perishables cold.

Sadly, the beloved cabin was destroyed one evening when an overnight guest woke to discover a spark from the fire had ignited the floor and he tossed what he thought was a bucket of water on it. The bucket, we learned later, contained kerosene, not H2O. The entire cabin went up in flames, turning the night sky a brilliant orange. All that remained was the chimney and cellar hole.

Which is all to say our childhoods were rife with physical activity, creativity, imagination and a lot of storytelling.

The days seemed longer then; the years passed by more slowly. Now, whether it’s a symptom of growing old or spending too much time in the digital world, we can’t seem to stop the speeding clock. Every day goes by faster than the last.

It might be like detoxifying, giving up devices. But I suspect that, after several attempts at reaching for a phone or  remote that isn’t there, we’d acclimate.

We could read to our hearts’ content, write letters, bake a cake, pat the cat, step out to view constellations in a starry sky — imagine that becoming the new normal? We might just learn to like it.

In a world spinning out of control, we have the power to pause it.

Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 36 years. Her columns appear here Saturdays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at acalder@centralmaine.com. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com.