I look forward to spring, but feel conflicted about wishing away what’s left of our Minnesota winter. I dearly love the long dark nights and crystalline days, and I hate to see it go.
I rather enjoy the bone-biting cold that envelops our northern world, and I’m especially fond of the late winter storms… those that, in their fury, bring us the coldest days of the year.
This story is about the cold, so throw a couple of all-night logs in the wood stove, fill your tin cup with whisky, and settle back into your favorite chair while the full moon rises, the wind howls, and the northern owls call.
“I love the cold!” – Ebeneezer Scrooge
I listened to the footsteps for the forth time in less than an hour. Like each time before, someone paused at my bedroom, and their feet cast fantastically elongated shadows through the pool of light that seeped under the closed door.
The shadow hesitated longer this time, and I gathered every available bit of blanket around me until only nose and eyes were exposed. It started to leave, but turned back to linger a while longer, and then quietly stole away. “Do you think he’s alright in there?” I heard my mother ask as she got back into bed. “He’s got the windows wide open again. I can feel freezing air from under his door.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” My father replied. “If he freezes to death, we’ll just leave the windows open and he’ll keep ’til spring when I can dig him a nice hole. Let’s go to sleep.”
I smiled with the knowledge that they wouldn’t be back and turned on a flashlight, which was placed on the nightstand to illuminate my book, “Lost in the Barrens”. If the two boys in Farley Mowat’s story could survive a winter lost in the frozen expanse of Canada, then I’d make it through till dawn.
“Bob,” my father called out, ”turn off the god-damned flashlight and go to sleep, right now!”
As I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep that night, I knew, just as surely as there’d be ice on my glass of water in the morning, that as soon as I was old enough to strike out on my own, I was headed north.
I believe that the cold is as pure and ennobling as the North Country that embodies it, so it was inevitable that I’d move to Minnesota. Once here, I quickly realized that cold brings out the best in people. It requires and rewards all of the values I admire, and disregards those who don’t measure up. People who live in the north take pride in simply enduring.
Up here, a good winter’s day is bright and clear and the colder the better. It’s a clean, dry cold that’s pure and healthy. I learned a lot that first winter. I could identify someone who enjoyed the cold by the calm and comfortable spring in their step as they walked down to the post office in mid January to collect their mail. There was no hurried gait, no buried chin… no jittery ducking from the shelter of one doorway to the next with hands buried deep in pockets. Those who live here by choice are as likely to stop and admire the blueness of a winter sky, or engage in a conversation about the merits of a new ice auger, as other folks are to rush for the warmth of home, office, or idling car.
People who live in the north wait until the coldest part of winter to split the wood that was cut the summer before. When it’s below zero, even the toughest oak or ash fairly explodes with the drop of a good splitting maul.
I discovered that in the North Country, a “good” snowfall is measured in double digits, and after a good storm my neighbor will probably take the day off to have fun with the new snow blower the kids gave him for Christmas.
On New Years day, the citizens of Thunder Bay bowl with frozen turkeys in their icy alleys… and ice fish on Lake Superior with a canoe nearby because the ice is always breaking up from wave surges. More than likely, folks who live here take their winter vacations even further north because there’ll be more snow and ice. People up here net the smelt run in the spring, even though the DNR requires them to wear blaze orange life jackets so that their bodies will be easier to find. Everyone’s cabin is “up north”. I’ve never once heard anyone say they were going, “down to the cabin”. We tell our friends who’ve moved to Anchorage, that they ran away from the cold.
It was in Minnesota that I learned that happiness was more than a drawer full of thick wool socks. It also includes pack boots, red union suits, moose hide choppers (with knitted wool liners), Malone overalls, beaver fur hats, thick sweaters with cowl necks, and hand knitted scarves.
The cold was the reason for my first marriage. I decided to take the woman I was dating to a cabin that I thought to buy. It started to snow very softly as we left Minneapolis and I took that to be a good sign. It was a full-blown blizzard when we arrived at the trailhead four hours later. The track was impassible.
How perfect, I thought to myself as I shoveled a turnout in the snow and backed in. While she waited in the heated cab, I packed the big toboggan with food and wine, and after I coaxed her out the truck, we started the mile long hike through the woods. The storm had intensified, and gusts moaned through ancient white pines, driving snow in a nearly whiteout condition. The trail drifted over, and I managed to lose my way only once or twice. “This is great!” I yelled over the howl of the wind. “We could be snowed in here for a week!”
In retrospect, I’m not sure if she smiled or some wind-driven snow found its way down her back. “Isn’t this fun!” I shouted, over my shoulder as I broke trail for her through waist deep drifts… maybe I should have turned to catch her response.
The cabin door needed to be shoveled out, as snow had drifted over the windows. It seemed even colder inside the cabin than out in the storm, and our breath hung still in the air… like in a meat locker. But, the stove was big, the wood was dry, and it wasn’t long before it was comfortable enough to go without mittens for short periods of time.
I opened a bottle of wine, set it next to the stove to thaw, and started to rustle up some dinner. When the ice melted off of the front windows, we watched as the really heavy stuff started to fall. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked after a glass or two of wine.
“Why, we passed it on the way in,” I said cheerfully. “One of the nicest outhouses I’ve ever seen!”
“Outside?” She asked in a tone that should have hinted to me that she thought that I had exaggerated about how nice it was. “Out there?”
“Oh, sure, now I understand,” I said. “I’ll shovel a path for you to the door, and light the kerosene lamp to warm the place up a bit. Why don’t you just wait here and have some of these sardines. It won’t take me long.”
I forced the door open against the wind-banked snow and disappeared into the storm. I had a double-wide path cleared in no time, lit the lamp to warm the privy, and as an afterthought swept all of the porcupine pellets into one corner where they’d be out of the way. As I turned to go, a gust blew the door open and extinguished the flame. “Well, this won’t do.” I said to the night, and lit the lamp again. I closed the door quickly, and took care to turn the block of wood that locked it in place.
I opened the cabin door to find her wearing a parka and toque; a scarf wrapped around her face and my extra pair of choppers. “All ready?” I asked. “Right this way, we better hurry before the path drifts over.”
The privy had indeed warmed up a bit, and once she was royally ensconced, I shut the door and turned to leave, remembering at the last moment to lock the door so that the wind wouldn’t blow it open and leave her in the dark.
I congratulated myself on my thoughtfulness as I shook the snow off of my parka, and some of it landed on the stove, where it sizzled. That’s funny, I thought. I’m sure I dampened it down before I left. The stove was glowing a dull cherry red and the temperature in the cabin had soared into the forties. I closed the damper and choked the flame. No sense in wasting wood.
Another bottle of wine was opened and I stood before the wall-length bookshelf to review the selection of reading material. I love to examine the collections of dusty books in my friend’s summer places. There’s no telling what you’ll find; there are many standards, of course, ones that you’ll find in every retreat. Other titles are more obscure and often reveal something about the cabin’s owner. When I found a first edition copy of Doctor Zhivago it became obvious to me that this cabin was also a winter hideaway. I pulled the volume free, and settled down with it in an old winged back chair. The tin of sardines, which had hardly been touched, balanced nicely on one wide arm, and a glass of wine on the other.
I went immediately to my favorite scene, where Lara, her daughter, and Zhivago are living through a frigid and mystic winter on the steppes of Russia. “Ho, ho, ho, I love the snow… I love the snow.” The daughter sings as she frolics outside.
“I love this scene.” I said aloud, as I reached for the last sardine, scooped up some mustard sauce with it, and popped it into my mouth. “It’s so idyllic.”
BANG BANG BANG!
“Wow.” I said. “The storm has really picked up.” I took another sip of wine.
BANG BANG BANG!!
“Jeeze… I wonder if a tree hasn’t fallen.” I scraped frost off the window and looked outside. Then fingered through the mustard sauce to make sure that I hadn’t missed a little fillet. The tin was empty.
BANG BANG BANG!!!
It was as this point that something in my training kicked in, and the rule of three gunshots to signal distress came to mind. It all became clear in that instant, and hit me like the armored train in Zhivago.
“Oh shit!” I said, and quickly finished my glass of wine before rushing to the outhouse. I’ve never seen a wolverine cornered it’s den before, but that’s what came to mind as I unlocked and opened that outhouse door. Demonic eyes reached out for me from the darkest recesses of the outhouse, and porcupine pellets were everywhere; they’d really hit the fan!
After dinner, I fed more wood than was necessary into the stove, in a noble attempt to make up for my thoughtlessness, and went back to my book. Good thing that I brought so much wine, I thought.
Finally, it was time for bed, and I looked forward to it, if only to escape her accusing eyes. While A-frames are cute to look at and evoke all kinds of romantic images, they’re a horror to heat. The lofts are hot and the floor cold. The temperature in the second story, where we were to sleep had soared into the fifties! I drug the mattress down the stairs so we could sleep on the floor, where it was nice and cool.
We made up, of course, but in retrospect, I’m convinced that she married me only as a means of punishment for being locked in that snowbound outhouse.
Several months after the divorce, I took Lisa, who I’d just met, up to my cabin (one of the few things that I managed to keep) for a long New Year’s Eve weekend. After helping me shovel out a turn-around on the logging road, we backed the truck in, loaded two toboggans, and headed down the trail. “This is great!” Lisa yelled over the storm. “We could be snowed in here for a week.”
I smiled as she broke trail for us through the waist high drifts. “Isn’t this fun,” she shouted over her shoulder.
When I finally caught up with her, she was shoveling out the doorway to the cabin, which had drifted over. She stopped, as I approached, and nodded to the outhouse. “That’s one of the nicest outhouses I’ve ever seen,” she said.
