Our landscape is white and the skies have been quite gray and overcast – the gun-metal gray of winter. The days are short and the darkness sometimes seems especially long. This morning I got up before dawn and was drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. I eventually looked up and noticed the brightness of the morning had started to take over the black sky. As I stepped out the front door, the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds caught my eye; it was a beautiful contrast and a welcome splash of color that we had been missing the past week. The trees are leafless structures now, thrusting their branches up and out, and the cotton-like clouds seemed to be catching on the branches of the tree as they were moving by.
winter
A week’s slide into winter
Our landscape that was brown and cold last week has been transformed into winter. Daytime temperatures in the single digits, subzero temps at night, and snow have brought the look and feel of winter. Ponds and lakes that were previously frozen with clear ice are now covered with snow, and are once again being populated with fish houses. The ducks and geese have all headed south in search of open water. And we are learning again how to drive in ice and snow. How quickly this seasonal change has taken place!
Early winter dawn along the Mississippi River
The cold of winter has swept south from the Canadian prairie into Minnesota. The lakes are icing over, but the rivers take a bit longer because of the current. We were north of the Twin Cities along the banks of the Mississippi River yesterday. The early morning light cast a beautiful glow on the barren trees along the banks, and the water was flowing but it contained numerous chunks of ice headed southward. Eventually the river will freeze in some sections, but the sections that remain open will attract birds and wildlife, and will teem with activity throughout the cold winter months.
Frost and ice in the morning
Our temperatures have been dropping at night causing the sloughs and lakes to begin their ice-over. It isn’t thick by any means, but it is the start of our shift from fall to winter. I’ve always enjoyed the reflections of trees and horizons in water, and the change over to ice gives these same reflections a much different look. The lines are softer and more muted, and until our lakes are snow-covered the reflections can sometimes be almost mirror-like. On this morning two days ago, the sun was burning through the cold temperatures and the heavy frost causing the landscape to glow in the early light.
A weekend on the North Shore
Last weekend we decided to go to the North Shore of Lake Superior. We left the Twin Cities Saturday morning in rain, drove through the fog and into the sunshine in Duluth, and drove along the shore to 50 degree temps. We were looking for a unique place to spend the night and found the perfect spot – the Two Harbors Lighthouse Station. Neither of us had spent the night in a lighthouse, and this was the perfect time. This lighthouse is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the North Shore of Lake Superior, with the first lighting in April, 1892. The area was a major shipping point for iron ores and the lighthouse was crucial in providing safe passage into Agate Bay Harbor. A keeper in residence was assigned to the lighthouse until 1981 when the Coast Guard fully automated the station. Fourteen years ago the Lake County Historical Society opened the residence as a bed and breakfast, and a unique and wonderful one! Saturday night, as we came “home” to the lighthouse with a sky-full of stars sparkling above, it was easy to imagine what life was like a century ago. On Easter morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast and noticed that the sky was fluctuating between sunshine and snow showers. Spring is fickle this year, and especially in northern Minnesota. When we left the lighthouse we drove inland on county backgrounds, going in and out of the snow squalls, reminding ourselves that spring will be arriving. Eventually.
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