Snow comes into Roscommon over the jack pines and stacks up quietly, a foot at a time, until Higgins Lake is one white plain and the cottage roads are only a memory. Higgins Lake Marine plows through it — drives and lots opened, paths cut to doors and steps, sand or salt where ice builds on the shoreline grades. Lake-country places can sit a week between visits, so an opened lane is what makes a property reachable again at all. There is something to be said for arriving at a snowed-in road and leaving a clear line behind you. Roscommon, Higgins Lake, Houghton Lake and the roads around North Higgins Lake.