By SUSAN DROMEY HEETER, Joyful Musings

Someone once said, “There are hearty New Englanders and then there are hardly New Englanders.”

 Today I muse joyfully on some of the heartiest New Englanders who I witnessed at a  Portsmouth snowball fight, an unofficial event after Saturday’s blizzard that brought young and old out to fling some snowballs, laugh under a blue sky on Market Square.

Camden Johnson, 12, Carter Wiles, 11 and Michael Makum, 11 were there representing the Kittery, Maine contingent. 

 Theresa Garabedian, 62, remarked, “You’re never too old for a good snowball fight.”  I caught her as she was creating an arsenal of snowballs, ready for combat, ready to engage in battle.

Garabedian also laughed, “My husband wants nothing to do with me.”  He watched from across the street, a safe distance from the mayhem.

And on a Sunday afternoon at the end of a long, long January, after a storm that dropped lots of snow on Saturday, snowballs and snow chunks crashed and landed on heads, on shoulders, on feet, on the ground.

 People laughed and played and giggled and threw snow.  And survived. To laugh some more.

I muse joyfully you are a hearty New Englander, whether you are in New England or not. After the snowball fight, I met up with my friend, Ginny, another die-hard lover of the winter, of ice skating, of all things outdoors.

  When I told her I’d been skating on a frozen river, she suggested, should I fall in, I should not use my energy to try to get out, rather, to yell loudly for help and perhaps to always skate with a rope – then I could throw the rope to whomever comes to help me out.

I loved that conversation.  Many people I tell of my river outings are “hardly New Englanders” and admonish me for any kind of risk – even after I tell them of how truly thick the ice is, the fact that I’d never go anywhere near open water.

Ginny’s advice warmed my soul, as heartiness always does, as a great snowball fight brings warmth and cheer to a frigid Sunday afternoon. 

I muse joyfully you’ll skate on a river, you’ll partake in a snowball fight, you’ll bask in the glory that is hearty New England…and it’ll hardly cost you a thing.