I have my son-in-law Scott O’Brien to blame for my obsession with snow blowers.

Scott, my daughter Diana, and their daughter Natalie live in Wilson, Wyoming, just outside Jackson. It’s spectacular country. The Tetons are majestic; the Snake River is wide and powerful; the flats are expansive, giving wide vistas of sky and mountains. In the summer, caravans of campers and tour buses, not to mention cars packed with families either on their way or coming from Yellowstone National Park, stream through the town that has become the Greenwich, Conn. of the west. There are the trappings of the old west with boardwalks and horse hitching posts. But then there are the swank, high-priced shops and outlandishly expensive homes of the rich. Quaint log cabin homes, designed to fit into the western theme, are hardly “the little home on the prairie,” even though they pretend to be. With prices in the millions, these “vacation” homes can be as large as 10,000 to 12,000 square feet.

Wilson is a working families’ village with a collection of modest homes where people have vegetable gardens and chickens (sometimes a horse) in their back yards, along with woodpiles to get them through the winter, which can be excessively long. Snow in October is common and a flurry or two in June is frequent. Winter accumulations aren’t considered worthy of mention unless they well exceed 100 inches. Of course, that makes for good skiing and an avalanche of winter visitors.

Actually, it can be so popular that getting into Jackson in the winter can be difficult. But several years ago, Diana convinced us we should come out, and we were able to find tickets without taking out a mortgage. We went after Christmas and the vacation ski rush and got a glimpse of what life in this part of the country is like beyond the stores of Jackson and Teton Village ski slopes. I quickly learned you need four things to get through a Wyoming winter: a Subaru, a lot of wood, snowshoes and a snow blower.

The Subaru got us everywhere, from the snowy lot of the airport to the back hill roads, where we traded it for snow shoes and cross country skis to follow moose tracks on the canyon trail leading to Phelps Lake. At their home, the wood stove isn’t for ambience. It’s a primary heat source, with an insatiable appetite that has you feeding it hourly.

And then there was the snow blower. Four-foot mounds of snow edged the driveway. Scott added to them almost daily as it snowed at least three inches every night we were there. He has it down to a routine – brush off the cars, move them to the street, prime the blower, and then as neat as a Zamboni at Thayer Arena, a pass down the middle and a couple of runs and it’s done. By the second day, I was begging him to let me try it. By the third day, I was on my own, although nowhere nearly as proficient as Scott.

The machine was so much more than the single stage paddler I had at home. It had knobby tires, six forward speeds, a swan-like neck that sent the snow in a graceful arch and a push button start. This was rugged, a formidable machine to combat winter.

It was at least a year before I could rationalize getting anything like it for Rhode Island winters. I broke down four years ago with a forecast of 10 inches. Sears had an array of units and I got the last of the ones with individual wheel clutches – a cool feature that allows you to turn the blower around in no space.

I was praying for snow and barely had two inches accumulated before I was out clearing it away. It was awesome, although nothing like Jackson snow. That was the end of snow for that winter. The following year had a couple of storms and then last winter came along. Now that was the winter to have a snow blower. It rapidly became my friend. Two- and three-foot drifts couldn’t stop her. I treated her with respect, checked the oil and carefully cleared her path of sticks and anything else that might get caught in those blades. She handled the winter of 2015 like a champ. We were a team.

So far, this winter has been a disappointment – a measly six inches, if that, in January, and last Friday’s slushy mix.

Then, just as forecast, it started snowing at 8 a.m. yesterday. It sure looked like more than a dusting. Could we be getting a storm worthy of a snow blower? I can already feel the rumble of the machine and see that graceful arch of blowing snow.