Who needs winter? All week temperatures have been below zero. This morning was the coldest yet with -33°F in Two Harbors. Our friend Al showed up with eggs in the late morning; with an official weather site in Brimson, he recorded -47º F as he was doing his morning rounds.
I'm aware that as someone with a warm house and a full tummy, I have the luxury of enjoying winter. This morning when Mark and I headed down to the lake for our morning walk, a sharp line cut across the lake about 100 feet out. Close by, in the foreground, the water looked musky blue-purple-gray. Outside the line--shimmery gold. I assumed the gold was ice and the dusky color was open water until we got very close and Mark pointed out that it was the other way around. Add a rising sun partially obscured by billows of frost clouds, and every size of rock and twig shimmering with ice from a recent northeast wind, and you begin to understand how beautiful it can be around here.
Enjoy or not, northern Minnesota (for whom these are not record temperatures, by the way) needs deep winter. Winter is stabilizing. Temperatures well below zero freeze out pests like the emerald ash borer and the sea lamprey. Ice on the lake is good for cold water fish like trout and herring. Really if we have a problem this year, it's the thick ice (from that rainy day in December) in the middle of our snowpack that lessens the insulating impact of deep snow.
But today, with the girls on their third unexpected day home from school, we are celebrating with homemade cookies and Greg Paulsen's Winterdance by the fire. Who needs winter? WE do.