Now This is More Like It

Remember a few days ago, when I posted a picture of the sauna and the canoes by it? I was looking for things colored red. Now, just a smidgen of red is still visible. (I’m trying to post a picture, but the program won’t let me right now. I’ll try again later.) Between the snow we got last Wednesday, and the new storm over the weekend, we have better than sixteen inches on the ground. That's the way it should be this time of year. We were remembering how just a few years ago, we still had bare ground in early December, and mild temperatures on top of it. Greg and Robert got a notion to take a boat out for a ride, which they did. I strongly discouraged that, given the temperature of the water. But sometimes I don't get my way. At any rate, I would much rather have the conditions today, as it really feels and looks like winter.

The mist is rising again on the lake, so perhaps we will have ice soon. I noticed as I drove to town on Saturday that most of the other lakes had frozen. Loon was mostly covered, and it often goes right around the same time as Gunflint. I heard that Seagull also froze sometime in the last few days. All signs so far are falling into place for a real winter.

We used the snow wisely yesterday by going out to bank it around the foundations of the cabins and lodge. It is a lot of work to shovel it all around like that, but it goes a long way towards insulating the crawl spaces. Greg spent most of the day plowing out roads and driveways with his new plow truck. It's working well, and he figures that he is the only plow operator that listened to an opera while he was working. Nice to have a modern convenience like a CD player. His old truck is a 1979 Ford---they hadn't even invented the CD technology when that truck was built.

In the Really Good News department, the ski trails are getting packed this week, and we are hopeful that they can be groomed and tracked by the weekend. This, too, is early compared to recent years. Addie and I are anxious to get out there. I totally missed last year, with my heel injury, so I am especially looking forward to hitting the trails again.

Also on the docket this week: printing up the Christmas cards. I'll take over the kitchen with my makeshift "printing press", and then will be busy printing, signing, and posting them. Maybe I can convince Addie to bake some cookies while I am working....Yum!

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.

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.