My husband and I were lighthouse keepers for a week for the Rose Island Light in Narragansett Bay about 15 years ago. It was December and we had the island all to ourselves. We had a snow storm that week too and we experience what life was like in the 19th century. No people, no electric light, keeping warm by the wood stove. Brought over in a lobster boat with our supplies including food and lots of wine. Heaven!
I was born and raised on Cape Cod. The winter is a great time to live close to the Atlantic and by the seashore. Emerson had a word or two about it:
The water drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your bark, and the ship will cleave the wave in two that drowned it, and carry it, like its own foam, a plume and a power.
The cold is inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men of time.