There’s been scarce little snow so far this winter, and those who need their Nordic fix are getting antsy.

The National Seminar Series 25th Anniversary event comes to the Westbrook Performance Arts Center (471 Stroudwater Street in Westbrook) on March 10, promising an entertaining, educational day for salty anglers.

The soft light of dawn is filtering through the cabin windows. Despite the winter chill outside, the room is cool but not cold. I should get up and stoke the woodstove, but it’s no easy task when you’re toasty warm beneath flannel sheets and a down comforter. Instead I lay content for a while, listening to the quiet of the place, and admiring the artifacts adorning the log walls, which have comfortably sheltered many an outdoorsperson since the late 1800s.

It was exactly 70 years ago when Roger Page taught his first ski lessons as an instructor on a little rope-tow ski slope in Leominster, Mass.

A suite of birds resides year-round on the Arctic tundra or on the taiga, the habitat of sparse trees just south of the treeless tundra. These birds include great gray owls, snowy owls and common redpolls.

Walking into the Volition Ski workshop in Bangor, I was struck by how much it felt like the ski tuning room we used in college. Loud music was blasting, skis were everywhere, and Chris Bagley and his fiancee were hunched over a pair of skis, hard at work.