Winterfest was already going to be a nice time Saturday. The Wiscasset Parks and Recreation Department had a weatherproof game plan. But some things can only happen with snow.
Attendees and organizers interviewed were all glad that winter returned just in time, in a much bigger way than forecast.
Wiscasset Middle High School student council members, on hand to help with the fun and raise donations for WGME’s Spirit Challenge food drive, took time for a snowball fight under the sun, with the abundant supply of snow Mother Nature dropped one day earlier.
The snow’s timing worked well for the event, and for getting a snow day off from school Friday, senior Remy Segovia noted between throwing and dodging snowballs outside Wiscasset Community Center.
Asked why he wanted to help Saturday, Segovia said: “It seemed like a fun time for everybody, and it’s to help the kids.”
He would have helped anyway, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun without the snow, he added.
“We really wanted to do it for the kids,” fellow senior Samantha Arsenault said. “It’s a nice way to get everyone into the winter mood,” and help with the food drive, she said.
“And it’s really a nice ... community activity, with all the kids and integrating the high school into it.”
Students ran a cocoa station, complete with marshmallows and a wooden, red-and-blue-painted train that center staff member Bob MacDonald made specially for the event, at Wiscasset Parks and Recreation Director Todd Souza’s request.
It was a train because the cocoa was at a station, Souza explained, smiling from across the yard.
MacDonald, a major hockey fan, wore Boston Bruins gear as he used a department truck to plow remaining slush from the driveway.
A cool wind persisted but the sun was bright.
Souza has seen Winterfests with a less wintry backdrop and so he and others make sure the event can happen with or without snow. Friday’s snowfall made for the best of both worlds this year, he said.
Nearby, teens were trying out “fat bikes” from Bath Cycle & Ski. The width on the mountain bikes’ tires range from about 3.8 inches to five inches, compared to the regular two-plus inches, organizers of the bike demonstration said.
Fat-bike riding has taken off in the last few years and has spawned competitions like one going on at Sugarloaf that day, Wiscasset’s Neal Larrabee, a former Bath Cycle & Ski employee helping with the bikes, said.
“(They are) fun to ride in the snow,” Larrabee said. Son Camden Larrabee, 9, joined him Saturday. His favorite part of Winterfest was the ice sculpture. “It looks cool,” he said.
Chewonki Foundation had snowshoeing and other offerings outside, and a presentation to an interested audience of all ages inside the center. The theme was animals’ adaptations to winter.
Emma Balazs, program assistant for Chewonki’s traveling natural history program, called on children to share their knowledge, asking them, among other things, what do some birds do that rhymes with hibernation. Then she gave the first syllable, “Mi-?” and the voices followed, answering “Migration.”
She also asked who been taught that black bears hibernate in the winter. Several hands went up. Black bears are really in the category of winter sleepers, who might come out at times, as opposed to true hibernators, Balazs said.
She brought out an opossum for attendees’ quiet viewing. It came to Chewonki after losing its tail that is crucial for climbing. An opossum has a short lifespan, even in captivity; a prior one at Chewonki lived to about 3 and a half years, she said.
Olivia Gagne came to Winterfest with husband Darryl Gagne and daughters Emma Antoine, 7, Ava Antoine, 3, and Olivia Gagne, 6 months. “We’ve been looking forward to it all week,” the Dresden woman said.
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