Living in the Fifties

While I was born in the late fifties, my memories of that decade are only from photographs of that short time. Living in the fifties refers to the temperature inside the lodge lately. Given the extended dry period and subsequent high fire danger that the Gunflint Trail has been experiencing, we just didn't feel it was prudent to have a fire in our woodstove. Both our stove and our chimney are in excellent condition, and a small fire would not throw off a lot of sparks, but we just didn't want to take the risk. It reminded us of the days during the Ham Lake Fire, when the weather finally turned and it was more typical of spring: chilly mornings, dampness, and clouds. We were freezing in our evacuation home: the bus, parked at the Recreation Park in Grand Marais, right on the shore of the big lake, complete with a cold east wind. The only way to warm up the parked bus is with the miniature woodstove in it. Were we starting a fire at that moment? No way!

It's true, we do have a furnace in the lodge, as our back up heat source. But when the daytime temps get into the upper fifties and lower sixties, with plenty of sunshine, it's hard to justify running the furnace and burning propane. The flip side is that the nights get down in to the upper thirties and low forties, so that cools the building down a lot. (Oh, and that open window upstairs so that we can hear the sounds in the night!)

As a result, it is often about 56 degrees inside in the morning. So I put on a couple of sweatshirts and bravely face it while drinking my morning tea. If I hadn't been conditioned to warmer weather, thanks to Hawaii, it might not feel so cool. Mostly, though, I just miss having a small fire in the morning and the evening, to take the edge off of the chill. In the early spring, as in the late fall, a fire in the woodstove requires only two or three chunks of wood, and the whole place is warmer. No need to stoke the fire and stuff the stove full for overnight. That would make it too hot. But there is nothing like a fire in the woodstove to warm bones that are chilled in the early morning.

This is just one of many reasons why we are grateful that it has finally rained up here. On Thursday evening, the raindrops came along with a bit of thunder and lightning. Friday morning we had several intermittent showers. Last night we had some good hard rainfall coming down. Though the noise of it woke us up many times, we didn't mind. It was a good sound, one that we had been craving. Our rain gauge hasn't been put in to place yet, but we do have some unofficial ones out there. A bucket here, a container there, these will have collected the water, and we'll get an idea of how much fell. It isn't enough to quench the continued fire danger, but it does quell it for a bit.

And it means that at least for today, a little fire to warm up the place is not a bad idea. The sun is out this morning, and that too will help to bring us up into the sixties, at least inside. The Sixties...that's when my real memories begin....