S/V AMICUS

Who Needs Winter?

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.

Jan. 31 2019

Lake Superior shoreline

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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.

 

New Year, New Starts

Now that it's safely past the holiday season, and there's snow on the ground and sun in the sky, I have a fast-growing distance from December, which was really quite low. I was despondent about the weather.  December is always hard for this family; we want snow not just for fun but because it will reassure us that we still live on the same planet. this year--no go.  Weather data confirms that we had an exceptionally gray fall followed by an exceptionally dry and snowless December.  No wonder we had a hard time getting out of bed.

The other low was the despair I always feel over the constant rush and consumption of buying things in a world where we have no resources to spare.  However it was compounded by a rare joy in buying things and giving them to people I love!   As a consequence, my bank account has been rudely gouged and my identity as a minimizer is shaken.  However my kids love me so there's a decent trade-off.

Once Christmas is imminent and the hype slows down, I love Advent.  This year I played piano, accompanied others, or orchestrated Christmas music repeatedly.  Lucky me. Christmas-to-New-Year's week, as always, slowed down to the point where finishing a puzzle was our highest goal.  Not only were the girls home and the cousins here from California, but everyone else was hibernating too--no pressure to keep up correspondence.  How desperately we all need that. 

Now it's January.  Snow has piled up, too much to disappear with this strange weeklong warming trend in early January.  Maybe we still have the same planet.  We are eager to go up rivers with participants who like to get out there the way we do, perhaps daysailers from the summer months.  If you're coming up the north shore, give us a call and we'll see where to go.

New Year's Eve Cabin, temps already below 0