I’m weird, I know it. I stop on sidewalks to take pictures of random trees covered in hoar frost and frozen fog.
Moments in temporal time that won’t survive the morning or slip from solids into the afternoon.
How could you not take note, though, when every surface, no matter how fine or small is frozen like the tiniest parts of a snowflake? Walking these days is a slush, shluchsh, slusssh instead of a crunch, crunch. My photo memories on my phone reminded me this week of selfies that Lucy and I took in the Minneapolis International Airport terminal three years ago when she left for Florence, Italy.
Last Friday Juliet and I ended up in the same drop-off lane and she joined her January term roommate and friends and professors on a plane bound for London, England. I will clarify the country, just then, because I’ve been to London, Ontario before.
I miss her, but I’m getting pictures of playbills and Bubble and Squeak and Berries and Cream and updates of all the wonderful theater and places and people she’s meeting.
It’s not as fleeting as frozen fog, but it is a magical and meaningful experience much anticipated and meant to be enjoyed within a whirlwind of snowglobe activity a mere 26 days long. It did snow there and with our warm temperatures here, they are essentially only 10 degrees warmer most days. I have to admit that I’d enjoy riding a big red double decker bus today and having a pint somewhere in a corner basement pub.
January in the Superior National Forest is fighting to break free of cold and flu season. I’ve had some form of coughing, fever and sore throat combined with excessive sneezing twice at least.
Both times, every bone in my body felt like I’d been hit and run over by something big for about 36 hours. I made it through to the other side. My carving wounds have healed and I’m working on some new fish decoys and lures (great projects to have just in time for the football playoffs). With 2025 in the rearview, nearly everything that I put my mind, pen, knife or conversation to is new. What a difference a single day on the calendar seems to make.
What hasn’t changed though is how beautiful Ely is after a fresh snow or a temperature drop before the fog lifts. How postcard perfect the branches of our evergreen trees droop as they become laden with snow… how the lakes talk and sing at night and the stars pop in the dark sky above.
Woodsmoke from stoves keeping homes warm, animal tracks and raven tracks each morning, and the sounds that your skis or snowshoes make moving through the snow, these are all the same.
So is the silence that naturally seems to stay after summer. So is the cold that creeps into you after hours in the darkhouse, watching and waiting with your spear. So is the undeniable feeling the same as it has been forever, that we are right where we are meant to be, despite hardship and loss and everything that is equally more wonderful than we deserve.
