BACKROADS • MAY 2022
Page 25
So, tonight after sundown I’m gonna pack my case Without a word, without a sound disappear without a trace Ohh oh, I’m going southbound, ohh oh, I’m going southbound Thin Lizzy
T
he groundhog. They are basically marmots (genus: marmota monax) though in some places they are referred to as woodchucks (especially in Canada where woodchucks really do chuck wood) but, for the most part, here in the northeast, we call them groundhogs.
As Bill Murray and all of us know the groundhog has been bestowed with certain supernatural powers and the mid-winter ritual of yanking a sleepy rodent out of its den to terrify it with news cameras and men dressed like it was 150 years ago is an amusing American tradition. But it didn’t start here rather in Europe with the Germans – who always were starting something. Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal—the hedgehog—as a means of predicting the weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State. On February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, it gets scared and runs back into its burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring. This year Punxsutawney Phil called for 6 more weeks of winter – which didn’t surprise us as it was just February 2 – but a week or so later we felt it was time to escape for a week or so. Head south and see what we could find along the backroads below the line that Mason & Dixon drew 235 years ago.
