Which comes first--the snow or the plow?

For more years than I can remember, we have taken a few days in late fall to travel to Duluth with the kids. Usually we have gone in mid-November, to do a little shopping and see the Christmas parade. Due to other obligations, we put off this trip until this week. Our main task this time around was to get a new plow for Greg's truck. He's been using the same one for about eighteen years. It has served him well, as has the truck to which it is attached. But the time has come to replace it, and as of today, he has a shiny new Boss plow, and the old one is a back-up.

So what happens while we are gone? It snows!! How's that for ironic? Now I know how to get it to start snowing....but I don't think that Greg needs a new plow each year. We heard from Sharlene this afternoon that we had six fresh inches and that it was still snowing. We head back home tomorrow, so then we will be able to report just how much new snow has fallen on Gunflint Lake. It's exciting!! The first significant snowfall of the year always is so much fun, and I'm sorry that we are missing it. One thing I know for sure----I'm following Greg (we brought two vehicles to Duluth in order to get the plow put on over in Superior), because he has the plow.

A Good Time for Everyone

One of the advantages of self-employment is that I can steal a few extra minutes before I get up in the morning, without adding a ton of stress to my life. So it was this morning, as I listened to Greg, already up, grinding his coffee. I recalled early mornings as a child, smelling the coffee my parents were preparing, and hearing the radio they had playing. A guy named Hunter Como would sing, "It's wake up time", and then do a little trill on his guitar. It's wonderful that memories from so long ago can stay with a person. The second thing I did is something that I always do in this season: check out the window to see if it is snowing. Indeed, we are receiving some wayward flakes, softly floating their way down. When this is the case, at this time of the year, I feel a sense of relief.

The Thanksgiving weekend was a bustling and enjoyable time. We had several folks in who either cooked up their own feast, or went down to the wonderful bounty that was being offered at our neighboring lodge. We ourselves relished in one of the very best dinners I think that I have ever had. Greg's sister Geri and her friend Donn had raised the turkey that we ate, and had butchered it just a couple days prior. Addie took one bite, turned to Greg, and said, "Oh, Papa! We should raise turkeys!" I don't know that we're ready to take that on, but the difference in flavor does make it tempting. We all did our best to bring an item that was, at least in part, "locally produced". My contribution was an ice cream lemon meringue pie, in which I made my own ice cream from milk obtained at the local dairy. It is raw milk, which we have been drinking for about a year now. We had homegrown vegetables, herbs, and even a chicken from Geri, too, in case the twelve-pound turkey wasn't quite large enough. It truly was a feast for royalty. I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, too.

The wax disapppeared from the pots on Friday faster than I could melt more for refills. We made several pairs of beautiful beeswax candles, and the kids had a ball making the colored paraffin candles. Somehow, there was room in the kitchen for everyone. This year, we melted the bulk of the wax outside, and that really helped with the moisture management. Wax needs to be melted in a water bath, and in the past, it has almost felt like a sauna in the kitchen at the end of the day. Now everyone has new candles, in all shapes and sizes to burn at home, and think about the day they made them on the Gunflint.

Saturday was baking day, and I fired up the bread oven early. I had noticed last month when firing the oven that there was a lot of steam coming out of the firebricks. It seems that with all the rain of September and October, some of it had gotten under the hearth. I could even hear it sizzling. In that previous baking session, the pizza crusts had steamed rather than baked. Oh dear! During this session of firing, I saw lots more steam coming out of the chimney, and I could see where it was evaporating off of the outer walls. Maybe we've finally baked it out of there? I hope so. I baked four loaves of ciabatta, and some guests baked two loaves of rosemary ciabatta. I tell you, after several weeks of not baking, the taste of that familiar bread is so good. It reminds me of how much I love it. Then again, I know that I can't bake like that year-round, or I would weigh about three-hundred pounds! Once the bread was done, we baked off pizza for a busy group of pizza-makers in Tamarack, who came up with a colorful batch. The scent of those was enough to drive me back into my own kitchen to whip out a few crusts, then enlist Paul and Addie to put on some toppings and help bake them. Even though I can bake the same recipes in my kitchen oven all winter, we are in agreement that they just don't taste the same as those that come from the wood-fired oven.

The lake is still open, but many of the smaller lakes have frozen over. We saw steam rising off of Gunflint one day, a good sign that things are cooling off. The moon was full and bright throughout the nights, so it was easy to be out and about for walks. Once again we have moonshadows. The path that the moon follows in the cold months is similar to the one that the sun follows in summer--higher in the sky, sometimes directly overhead. It's a great time of the year to take walks at night, as you can see so well. Just be sure to bundle up.

We are closed again for a few weeks, with plans to re-open about the 20th of December. Greg is working hard on the bathroom at Spruce cabin, so that it is done by then. The rest of us will be busy with more seasonal cleaning, and of course, the other kind of seasonal preparations: those for the big holidays yet to come. The days will fly by, as they always do.

Reindeer Roadshow

For the last two years this has been held in Barnstaple. Last year my husband took the kids but I couldn't make it, so this year I was determined to go along. This year's Reindeer Roadshow was held in Bideford. The roadshow bit was Lantern FM, the local radio station, with a stage at the bottom of the High Street. The bit I was interested in was the Reindeer bit. They were lovely and surprisingly small (its no wonder Santa needs eight of them to pull his sleigh!)

We arrived in Bideford just as Santa was coming along the Quay and we followed the procession til we met my sister and her son. Then we wandered up the High Street for a look around, went into a shop and completely missed the turning on of the Christmas lights, much to daughter number two's disappointment (especially as she wasn't there for the Barnstaple one last week.) However, finding the reindeer on the Quay more than made up for it. We stood and watched them for ages, and she managed to touch on of their antlers, which are covered in fur. Then she cheered up even more when I lent her my camera and took a photo of the baby reindeers (well actually a baby reindeers bottom, but she wasn't bothered about that!)

There were lots of street entertainers around too and we managed to get one of them to make us some balloon animals, then it was off for a cup of tea before coming home.

Looking for Color

Although I am not colorblind, I find that during this time of the year, I have to go actively searching for color outside. For whatever reason, my mind always registers the color grey when thinking about November and April. So often during this month, the sky is grey, the water is grey, and the trees have taken on that very dark drab green that they wear all winter. Of course, there is black, and there is white when we have snow, and we even get to see blue when the sun is out. So it isn't really all grey, but it definitely is not as colorful as what we just went through with the leaves changing, or as it is in summer when the flowers and foliage are in the peak of their times.

So I went looking for red. I could only find one thing natural, and that was these little berries on the ends of this bush. They grow right down on the edge of the beach, near Cedar Point cabin. I happened to photograph them the other day, when the waves had been lapping the twigs. Most of the bush was encased in ice, but these berries were high enough to escape it.

The snowfall from last night made it easy to spot the red canoe, with just a thin blanket on top of it. Soon I hope to see that the canoe is fairly buried in white.



And finally, though it isn't true red, the roof of the sauna also sported a dusting of white. The temp was 22 degrees this morning, and we hear that it is predicted to go down. That is fine, as long as a good dose of snow is soon to follow. The insulative properties of the flakes goes along way towards preventing frozen septic pipes come January and February.

If you've never had the opportunity, you should take a peek at the work of Andy Goldsworthy. He is a British artist, living in Scotland, and has published several books of his artwork. We first discovered his books at the library, and they are a treasure of photographs of sculptures done out in nature. He finds colors in the full spectrum, and arranges them into beautiful works, and photographs them. Here is a link to some of his images: http://images.google.com/images?q=andy+goldsworthy&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title We always find inspiration in looking at his books.

Today is pie-making day. That is my assignment for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'll also be getting things ready for our annual tradition of dipping candles on Friday. The kids were really little when we first started this......Addie still enjoys dipping candles with me, and we have several guests and friends who will join us. It's a good way to start the busy holiday season.

Christmas Lights

I don't normally go in for this sort of thing, but as I had nothing much else to do today, and as there was someone reasonably famous coming to do it, I thought I'd make the effort and go and watch the Christmas lights being turned on. The someone reasonably famous was Joss Stone, a devongirlie herself, and a someone who is involved with local charity Amigos International. (She made a visit with them to Uganda, my daughters teacher went too and helped to make a video and educational pack that is going out to school across the county.)

Anyway, me and my littlest one trekked down to Barnstaple's newly re-vamped Square, along with hundreds of other people, and were only able to squeeze our way to about half way to the stage area, hence the blurry photo. Joss came on and sang 'Son of A Preacher Man', turned on the lights then left again. There were some pretty spectacular fireworks (look and learn Chivenor) and then it was all over.

Quiet Times in the Woods

It was nice yesterday to wake up to a fresh dusting of snow on the rooftops, and once again covering the Canadian hills across from us. The previous days had been warmer, into the low forties, and had melted the little snow we'd had. As I drove to town, I also saw that the warm-up had re-opened the two lakes previously skimmed with ice. No longer were Little Iron and Swamper capped and smooth. It seemed strange to see the wind lapping small waves on them. It won't be long, however, until they have ice that will stay for the winter.


The snow, though it is less than a half-inch, helped put me in the mood for the day's task: More work on our annual Winter Tracks Festival. This is the fourth year of the festival, and we are busy planning for all of the activities and events that celebrate the fun of snow and cold. Last year's festival was a great mix of skiing, snowshoeing, ice-fishing, snowmobiling, and other traditional winter sports. We added to that lots of great snow sculptures, winter pizza at the bread oven, and some ice fishing and snowmobile opportunities. At the last minute, we had a wonderful snowstorm that brought us just what we needed---several inches of fresh, fluffy snow. Unfortunately, it also made travel poor for some folks, so they were not able to make it all the way up here. Still, it was a great weekend, and one that I would highly recommend. I am busy working on the brochure and the website changes. It should be updated within the next couple of weeks. When it is, I'll put a link here so you can check it out.

And here we are, less than a week away from Thanksgiving. The time flies for all of us, doesn't it? We will be celebrating here, with dinner at Sharlene's. Jim will be back from Alaska, and other family members will be joining us. On Friday we will again be dipping candles. That is our "Day after Thanksgiving" tradition, and it is always a wonderful time with friends joining in. The smell of beeswax will linger in the air, and I've come to associate that with this holiday.

The animals have been very quiet, at least in my realm. We saw a moose on the way to church last Sunday, but that's it for large animals. We've not seen any deer. The most of the activity remains around the bird feeder. Some pine grosbeaks have shown up, and their lovely rosy feathers add a nice touch to the other colors that I see among the birds. A goldfinch also came by recently. He hadn't yet lost his bright yellow summer colors, so I had to look twice to see what it was. Most of the time, we only see the goldfinches in their winter drab. In the summer, they find new places to be, so I miss out on the yellow stage. For years, I didn't really watch the birds much. I'm still amazed at all that I was missing, for it is an active and entertaining sight.

The Weather Then and the Weather Now

It's not often that I can remember the weather on a particular day several years ago. Some specific event needs to be tied to the day in order for this to happen. For example, many folks in these parts can remember the 32 inch snowfall on Halloween 1991. Hands down, the easiest to recall is the big windstorm on the Fourth of July 1999.

But on this day, back in 1988, I can remember that it was snowing. We already had some snow on the ground. It wasn't falling hard, but it was enough to cover the road, and the plow wasn't out yet, early on that Sunday morning. I had been up a large portion of the night, while Greg and little Robert slept upstairs. When I woke Greg up about 5:30, I said, "Greg, it's time to go now." And he said, "Time to go hunting?" I smiled and said, "No, it's time to go to the hospital."
I was in labor with Paul, who has turned 19 today---just about two hours ago, if we want to get technical about it, as Paul's little sister insists.

We got Robert up and into his carseat, and set off for the hospital in Grand Marais. Sometimes people will ask me if we were ever worried about getting to the hospital in time. I tell them that for the first one, we could have gone all the way to Chicago, so I knew that we would have time. I recall that the snowy road really helped me when I was having contractions, almost like a cushion against them. Nearer to town, the road had been plowed and was bumpier, and much less comfortable.

Gramma Sharlene met us in town to watch Robert. We labored through the morning, and Paul arrived shortly after noon. Interestingly, I had made the comment to Greg previously that if the baby were to come on that Sunday, he would be able to watch the Chicago Bears football game from the hospital. Sure enough, he got to watch the second half.

Paul mustn't have been paying too close attention to the game. The Bears Fan gene didn't get to him. Instead, to this day, he remains a loyal fan of the Green Bay Packers.

Today, the skies are overcast, and the wind is blowing from the south. That means that it is warm. When I went to check for the mail, I didn't even need a jacket. It is 48 degrees outside. What a difference. The weather is supposed to change tomorrow, and I hope that means that it cools off and snow comes our way. We won't be skiing for Thanksgiving, but it would be nice to have a little snow on the ground.

Paul is enjoying a day off, where he doesn't have to do any work if he chooses not to. Considering that during the seasons when we are open, and he can be asked to work up to sixteen-hour days, I'd say he deserves a bit of time off. Happy Birthday, Paul!