Snow house brightens up winter on Fosterville Road

LIKE A CAKE with green and orange frosting, a lighthouse emerged from a snow bank at the Fosterville Road home of Richard Lee.

LIKE A CAKE with green and orange frosting, a lighthouse emerged from a snow bank at the Fosterville Road home of Richard Lee.

By Gail Geraghty

Staff Writer

As the snow bank in his driveway rose higher with each new storm, Richard Lee, of 78 Fosterville Road, Bridgton, finally could take it no more.

So, the kid in him took over.

Using the snow sculpture skills he’d honed decades before as a Lake Region High School student, Lee went to work with his shovel. He packed, he scooped, he carved. And soon an oblong igloo replaced the tall bank of snow beside his mailbox, large enough for his girls to play inside.

“Lazarus, come out!” he joked, when he posted his creation on his Facebook page.

But Lee’s inner child had bigger plans.

He created angles for a roofline, and chopped down to make walls. He cut out windows to either side of the door, and added a carport. Voila! A cabin emerged.

But he didn’t stop there.

With a bow to the state he calls home, Lee decided to create a lighthouse, and added a tower, placing solar stake lights inside that softly glowed from within. His coup de grâce was the food coloring he added, using spray bottles of orange and green to define the roof, walls and tower, and blue for the ocean in front. He even used road salt to create a shoreline.

LIKE A KID INSIDE — is how one of Richard Lee’s Facebook friends described him after seeing his snow house creation.

LIKE A KID INSIDE — is how one of Richard Lee’s Facebook friends described him after seeing his snow house creation.

“Looks like an ice cream cake,” a Facebook friend commented. “How many hours you have in this, buddy?”

It really didn’t take that long, Lee said. It all started a couple of weeks ago when he was shoveling his driveway — for the umpteenth time.

“I got tired of looking at a snow bank,” he said.

He worked on it off and on, and each time it snowed again he’d have to go out and touch it up by packing in the snow again and adding more food coloring. He figures he went through two boxes of the stuff.

As he worked, people driving by would honk their horns or give him a thumbs-up. Some even stopped to take pictures and ask questions about his technique.

“It’s definitely not perfect,” said Lee, from a snow sculptor’s perspective. But it felt good to get out in what seems like an endless winter. He especially liked going inside to sit for a while, to feel protected from the bite of the wind.

Snow now covers the lighthouse after the most recent storm, and Lee doesn’t think he’ll be maintaining his creation much longer. “It kind of fades away,” he said, referring to the coloring.

So, too, will the memory of this winter, with its mountains of snow.