Alpine Clippers

About Alpine Clippers

The hills on either side of Norwich hold the cold like cupped hands, and a January night here can pile up quietly while the whole town sleeps. Alpine Clippers is out in the middle of it — plowing driveways and lots, opening walkways, spreading salt where a grade turns slick before the first commuter reaches Route 12. The work is measured in small mercies: a clear apron at the end of a driveway, a path to the mailbox, a parking lot that reads as one plain black rectangle at dawn. Snow keeps its own hours in Chenango County, and this is a business built to keep them too. Come morning nobody thinks about it, which is precisely the point.