It’s only mid-December and not only is it beginning to look a lot like Christmas, it’s already been seriously cold. Last week morning temps were below zero. I have already worn my long underwear once, the window at the head of my bed is shut and locked, and the ultra-warm sheepskin boots have been pressed into service.
But that’s not the reason I’m predicting a long, cold winter. It’s my internal Farmer’s Almanac: my dreams. I’ve already dreamt once of swimming and kayaking in the tropical waters off the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Every winter, I have tropical swimming dreams. They are lovely…warm, turquoise water…white sand beaches….then I wake up!  |
| Sam, left, and Jay Miller at Trunk Bay, USVI, February '09 |
This year, the dreams are a couple months early. This is not a good sign.
I have swum in the USVI – three times (highly recommend camping and snorkeling on St. John). Never kayaked, though. Not sure what that means.
I would like to blame early swimming dreams on the fact that I have begun swimming laps again. Not turning into Michael Phelps, just trying to do what I did in my early 20s for exercise. Exercise is torture for me if I’m on machines. It has to be a game (racquetball, anyone?), a project (extreme gardening in zone 3-4 or hiking a trail) or something that does not make me feel like I am going to die (with lap swimming, you’re not too thirsty or hot).
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| Yes, I swam in Lake Superior in 2011! |
I love to swim. Don’t necessarily love laps, but love floating and diving on a sunny day. It is one of the cheap pleasures of growing up in Michigan, where the glaciers dumped sandy-beached spring-fed lakes in every county but the one in which I grew up – a good reason to move away. I met three high school friends in the UP last July, and in the hot seven hour drive home to Duluth, I stopped to swim three times – once in Lake Superior.
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| Lake Superior in November is too cold even for labs! |
Previous summers it has been only two weeks. One year, Lucy, my border collie springer mix, and I swam for six weeks – heaven! (That dog was the only dog I’ve had who just loved to swim for pleasure, not to retrieve, just to be buoyant and moving. We were soul mates in that regard.) A previous lab was so obsessed she would go in even if it was icy and would swim and fetch sticks ‘til she was shaking and her lab lips turned blue.
Just for the record, there are spots on Superior that warm up, i.e. the surface water does, and the waves turn it over to make it swimmable. The boys and I found one spot, Hurkett Cove outside Thunder Bay, that was so shallow and warm it had weeds and actually was icky swimming. (More like a eutrophic lake than oligotrophic, look that up in your Funk ‘N Wagnalls!) Hurkett Cove is best left for birding.
Next year will mark my 30th in Minnesota. I have never lived in southern climes. I moved here from Alaska, where my friends said, “Minnesota? That’s COLD!”
Southeast Alaska – Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, et al – is not cold. It is a temperate rain forest, much like western Washington, only wetter. Highs in the 70s, lows in the 20s. Juneau had a ski hill. I thought it was a great climate, though a little gray. Rarely did anyone’s pipes freeze, and you didn’t have to plug your car in to get it to start, like you do in Fairbanks, where the McDonald’s had plug-ins in the parking lot. (Now it’s just a sign of electric hybrid cars.)
Minnesota gets the cold arctic blasts, and it makes for a seriously cold winter. Twenty above is fine, twenty, thirty or forty below is not. People can and do die in that weather.
My body is seriously attuned to the change of seasons. It knows I should swim to cool off in the summer. In the fall, I don’t care to eat salads and watermelon. I am craving beef stew and chicken pot pies. Like the squirrels, it’s time to bulk up.
The appetite difference is apparent in the summer when the air conditioning is on (yes, I do use it in Duluth…for a couple weeks only). It gets above 80, I’m not that hungry. The AC cools the house down, and I’m ravenous.
You might think that junk food and video games is the main reason for obesity in this country. True, but the third reason is air conditioning. People don’t eat as much or as heavily when they are hot (duh). Congress used to complete its work and go home before AC was invented. Now it is there year ‘round and look at what a mess we have!
So here I am, swimming indoors in the winter to work off what I would lose naturally in the summer if it wasn’t for AC.
“Go out in it!” people say about enjoying winter here. That’s fine when it’s 20 above. I enjoy a good snowshoe hike. I don’t own snowmobiles or ice fishing gear, just not interested. My kids downhill ski and love it, and we have a wonderful ski hill. I don’t choose to hurl myself down a hill; falling on ice in the parking lot or coming out of the door is enough of a fear.
So I survive with sheepskin boots (generic brands work), polar fleece, microplush throws, several types of gloves, and flannel sheets topped by an electric blanket. Oh, a sauna doesn’t hurt. It can really soak the cold out of your bones.
My first pair of Uggs I bought about 25 years ago at a Nordstrom’s in Phoenix. They were on sale for $29. Can’t imagine why they didn’t sell well there, but I was sure glad they didn’t. (At that point, they were functional, not fashionable.) They changed my life during Minnesota winters.
Nearly three years ago, we saw a young woman in the St. Thomas, USVI, airport wearing them. Really? I came here to get away from them.
Polar fleece is the miracle fabric. I look at historic pictures of inhabitants of Michigan’s Copper Country, where 200 inches of snow was plowed by horses and men during the copper rush in the late 1800s. Scores of photos show people standing on top of huge snowpiles and of kids being taken to school in sleighs. (http://digarch.lib.mtu.edu/showbib.aspx?bib_id=598018#)
“How did they do it without polar fleece?” I always find myself asking. They had wool. And no sheepskin boots. Miserable.
Local tourism folks will hate me for this, but the winters here are oh so much more bearable if you can get out for a week and go way south. Someplace where you can put the boots, hat, mittens, coat and scarf, sweaters and long pants and heavy socks away. Where you can swim, lounge and live in a swimsuit for a few days.
Some years, I’ve been lucky enough to do it.
But if that’s not possible, at least I will have my dreams.
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