Deep Winter on the North Shore...

The moonlight wanes on yet another overcast evening on the North Shore.  Snow flakes flutter in the morning.  The thermometer held it's ground above zero during the daylight hours this week.  That is until today.  The subzero cold feels normal right now.  It's alright: snow conditions improve as you ascend and the ski trails provide great glide no matter where you are.  We're content hunkering down and spending the evenings cooking thai, listening to some americana fade to the blues or jazz, reading huddled around the stove with a Chilean wool blanket and playing with Penelope.  Deep winter on the North Shore...

The Shadow of Twigs

The cold streak has snapped!  For the first time since last Saturday night (almost 130 hours ago) our thermometer reads a temperature above zero.  On top of that, a thick (7 inches) fresh powdery snow fall blanketed the upper North Shore last night leaving the trees dressed and ski trails begging to be tracked.

Cozy Night at Twenty Below

29 Below

Cold.  29 below.  Windchills make it feel nearly 50 below.  This kind of weather tests the outer limits of nearly anything subject to it's brutality.  Trucks groan to life and drive like a shopping cart with stuck wells.  Driving down the road one has to crank the heat on high or the enhanced windchill will frost over every window within moments of breaking 30 mph.  Every miniscule crack along a window or under the door frosts up.   Exposed skin-and uninsulated pipes- freezes in minutes.  Wood smoke creaps through the dense cold air like a stagnant blob of goo.  There's little room for error in this kind of weather.  Situations that normally would carry nominal consequences take on a different tone.

Once again, the woods are silent in the waxing moonlight.  Inside the wood stove churns.  We are snug and in deep sleep.  Then suddenly, in the early morning hours, the power goes out!  No longer do we have our electric baseboard heat to supplement the woodstove.  It's over 60 degrees below freezing outside.  Inside the stove and baseboards struggle to keep the cabin 40 degrees above freezing.  Without backup the stove quickly looses ground.  The distal corners away from the stove begin to cool.  I immediately stoke the stove, gather the baby, and set up the couch directly in front of the stove.    We cozy into the couch (dog and all), pile on our warmest layers of down and wool, and hope that embers hold and power is restored soon.

I nervously doze away the rest of the night-periodically stoking the birch inferno. Thankfully the cabin holds it's heat and within a couple of hours the power zaps back to life!  We fared well considering the deadly cold outside.  In the morning light the coals burned on, water flowed out of the pipes, the vehicles hesitantly started, and the lights illuminated brightly...        

Drift Lines

Dinner for Two

Windy and cold.  A strong low pressure trough brought a healthy snow storm (about 8") and excellent trail conditions.  This system, however, was scurried away by a massive lobe of cold artic air (and the 50 mph wind gusts that ushered it here).   Because of this "Alberta clipper" the thermometer isn't expected to breach zero for almost a week.  It is the kind of weather that reminds you were you are.  After all, it isn't suppose to be warm in the middle of January on the North Shore!

I was fortunate enough to break trail today before the wind picked up.  Deep fresh snow meant for a hard slog up the hill but also provided a fun controlled descent.  I don't expect much in the form of recreation while the air is so brisk.  A good book, warm stove, energetic little baby and the occasional nuthatch at the feeder is all that I am expecting over the next couple of days...

Embers faintly glow from the stove through the dim midwinter morning light.  The thermometer reads minus 17 degrees.  Howling northern winds drop the windchill to nearly 40 below.  Steam billows inside the moment you open the door as the frozen ice crystals in the air immediately expand and release in the warmth of the cabin.  Trees creak in the wind.  No other sound penetrates the north woods on such a morning as this.  That is, however, besides the thin veneer of snow crunching beneath my boots-like Styrofoam scattered around the tree on Christmas morning.

The quasi winter weather is winning.  First, howling winds tore shingles off the woodshed.  A poplar with a two foot thick trunk blew over and landed in between the garden fence and compost pile bin.  The two are less than twenty feet apart.  The crown of the tree is at least 15 feet wide leaving little room to spare! 

Then the wind stopped and the rain started.  That morning we awoke to an inch of ice!  Unable to even walk down the driveway I had to sand the tread of the entire road.  Needless to say I was a little sore after hauling and shoveling sand for eight hundred feet of road.  Once that task was complete we could safely drive down the rink into town.

Freezing rain persisted for about 24 hours.  The humidity was over 90 percent.  Local streams ran like spring melt off.  Finally the temperatures dropped.  The sound of pattering rain on the metal roof yielded to frozen swaying trees creaking in the wind.  "Dropped", however, is an understatement.  The temperature plummeted more than thirty degrees in eight hours.  This morning the change in temperature and humidity literally froze our thermometer to a stand still!   

Rivers of ice now flow down ditches and channels.  The recently-turbalent ditch is now a frozen ribbon of ice-choking every culvert it's slow creap to the lake.  On all sides of us the ditches are bank full with ice and threatening to spill over towards our cabin.

Despite this we're still getting out for our daily hikes.  It's slow going as many times I feel like I'm picking footholds up an alpine glacier.  The woods seem empty and still in this bitter cold with just a few cackling ravens and fresh wolf prints to guide us along back home to a steaming cup of tea. 

The air temperature will dip well below zero tonight and may not return into the positive territory for a number of days.  It's about time that we feel some winter air.  Now if only snow would come and insulate the ground to prevent our water lines from freezing!  Besides, it would sure be nice to get out for a ski!



Harsh cold winds push south across the Superior shore.  The days are getting longer.  The sun is higher in the sky at noon.  With our holiday travels over we slowly drift down into the eased-pace of the northwoods.  We celebrated the New Year with friends on the other side of the wilderness on the North Arm of Burntside Lake.  There our days were occupied with skiing, cards, coffee and sledding.  Our nights were full of music and laughter and spirits.  Now at home our days are spent at work.  Evenings are spent doing wood chores, finish carpentry, the occasional walk, and brewing my first batch of Ale.

Springs seep out ice along the North Shore.  Remember how the entire hill along the Lake is a package of volcanic rocks?  Think of it as a huge stack of pancakes with syrup in between the individual cakes.  The cakes are the individual lava flows.  The each have their own compositions, fracture sets, thickness, and dip towards the lake.  Water, just like the syrup, moves between these units. When the contact of the units is exposed in a road cut or natural break in the slope the water seeps out as a spring and freezes.  I like to think of the large ice springs as "mini-glaciers"!