West of the city the houses spread out, the drives get long, and the wind finds the open fields between Biddeford and the Dayton line. Petit Excavation plows out there, where a storm doesn't just fall — it travels, filling in behind you while you work. Long gravel approaches, turnarounds wide enough for a truck to swing, banks pushed back far enough that the next storm has somewhere to go: that is the shape of a winter in this country. Walkways get shoveled and sanded so the trip from the door to the car is nothing to think about. When the sky finally clears and the fields go blue at dusk, the work looks like it was always that way.