"Safety in Popsicles"

I love winter for ninety-eleven reasons:

1) When I wear snowshoes, my size 10 hooves actually feel petite in comparison. This is also why I sometimes sport a pair of huge "We're #1" foam hands when I teach sign language.

2) Scarves are the accessory that can never go wrong. I read this in Isadora Duncan's biography.

3) Cold temperatures create a perfect excuse to stomp inside and sip on a hot cup of cocoa...or, better yet, to bypass the cocoa and simply pour Kahlua into a mug.

Frankly, I bypass the mug and pour the booze directly into my gaping maw.

Oh, all right. I bypass the Kahlua and chug Isopropyl, Kitty Dukakis style. She, too, loved a good snowball fight--before the rubbing-alcohol-induced blindness set in. At least we now have an excuse for "throwing like girls."

4) If I view my reflection in a piece of ice, my crow's feet are hardly discernible. Frozen water mirrors are hella cheaper than laser surgery.

5) When I pour juice into a cup of snow, I am catapulted back in time to age six at the Yellowstone County Fair, to a day when I had a really kickarse snowcone. Fortunately, with my homemade snowcone, eaten far away from the 4-H cow barns, I don't even have to cry when I trip and drop it. I just dive to all fours and start lapping.

Pride and snowcones are poor bedfellows.

6) When I go cross-country skiing, my vocal chords get a much-needed limbering up; you better believe I'm a screamer on them hills. Post-ski, my throat thoroughly warmed, I'm ready to come home, spin a disc, and hit all Mariah Carey's high notes.

Incidentally, if I ever do willingly remain in the presence of a Mariah Carey song, please grab an ice pick and stab it into my frosty white buttocks. Then do it some more.

7) Ice skates = the poor man's Ginsu knife. Many a loaf of foccacia has regretted my triple lutz.

8) Before the cold really hits, when local ice is still in its infancy, having Niblet sit on a lakeside cliff and tush-sled downwards is a tad worrisome. However, once a solid, fierce coldsnap hits and holds, his airborn descent is no longer given final punctuation by a "splash"


but, rather, after a silent Wile E. Coyote moment of hovering mid-air between cliff and lake, our lad hits the frozen ice mattress of Lake Superior with a dull "thud."

What a relief that he won't drown.


(look at this patsy priss-priss of a lake way back in November; it's all "Oooh, look at my freely-churning waves." But no more, friend. No more. Slowly, gradually, the little flirt is hardening into a surface reminiscent of Nicole Kidman's forehead, capable of no natural movement.)

Way to go, Winter.

"Wax On; Wax Off"


In the past week, my mid-sized burg has received upwards of a foot and a half of snow. In other words, I've already had my Christmas.

Snow, to me, is a gift. I love that junk--slippery, light, heavy, cold, transmuting, crystalline; it satisfies my Myers-Briggsian ENFP need for change, as it takes the entire world around me, covers it with Abominable Snowman vomit, and makes everything seem different and new and worthy of attention.

Plus, snow means skiing. And, hypothetically, I love skiing.

Since we didn't leave the house so much during my youth in Montana (but, man, did we watch us some Family Feud!), I only took up cross-country skiing when I was 29. In my mind, then, that was last year, even though a closer look at the calendar might reveal it to have been 11 years ago.

When I started skiing, I lived in Southern Minnesota, where the strongest adjective that can be applied to a hill is "undulating." As well, I didn't know anyone else who skiied, so I pretty much winged it when it came to buying equipment and technique. Suffice it to say, I went "novice" with both. I learned to slide a little on short, wide, waxless skis. Shuffling along, I zip-a-dee-doo-dahed and looked at deer and squirrels at the local nature center. They looked back at me. It was all very "Disney on Ice," except no one came along and took a rifle and blew Bambi's mom's head off while I shooshed by.

A decade later, my equipment and ability were still stuck at novice. I had met and married Ye Olde Groom, a Norwegiany type who had been on skis from age 4 (admittedly difficult during the summer months, but, amazingly, he still managed to swim, eat corn on the cob, attend the State Fair, and learn to cross-pollinate corn, all with a pair of Rossignols strapped on). He'd even competed as an individual in cross-country skiing at the State tournament during high school. Having held a life-long anti-jock policy (killer premiums), I had to take a great leap of confidence to allow such an experienced athlete into my life, much less to allow him to lay eyes on me attempting to ski. The first time he watched me barrel down an icy hill, he was typically kind, applauding the fact that I had stayed on my feet, smiling joyfully, the whole way down.

I confessed that my face, pulled back by the G-force of the wind during my uncontrolled plunge, had been frozen into kind of a death grimace.

Nevertheless, I benefitted from the tips he gave me. But then, a few months later, we started running the Kid Gig, and that meant tag-team parenting, which, in turn, meant I was back to skiing alone, my technique petrified. Two winters ago, when we finally took the financial plunge to buy me some new, waxable skis, it was my will that became petrified. While my hope had been that better equipment could help me take that leap into becoming a better skiier, the actual result was that better skis highlighted completely my inability to ski. Those old, waxless skis? They'd obligingly hidden my lack of know-how. However, genuinely slick skis caused me to cry, panic, and then crumble out there on the trails. They went really fast, and I didn't want to go really fast. I had rather cottoned-to skiing like an 80-year-old priest, it turned out.

So now I'm all about rationalizing my way into situations where I need to use my old, comfort skis. The newer, excellent skis sit largely unused there, in the corner; they've taken up crocheting. I may get a lovely scarf out of my neglect. Instead, I either make a case for the temperatures being too cold or, um, too warm for me to deal with waxing my hot-shot skis. Barring that, I have decided to cultivate an enthusiasm for back-country and river skiing, pursuits that require wider, hack-em-up skis and virtually no understanding of how to use the poles or hit a rhythm. I don't even mind the spots with frozen waterfalls, where I have to take off my skis and huck them to the top and then scramble up after them. I'm never a better skiier than when I'm holding my skis and tossing them away from my body.

Oh yes, I'm a rhapsodic river skiier. Today, I twittered out for my first river ski of the season. Sure, it's been cold, but the season is still in its infancy, and the subzero temperatures have just settled in, so as I departed, I tossed a quick, mostly-facetious, "Hope I don't break through" to Groom.

Forty minutes later, after zig-zagging past and over myriad patches of open water and burbling holes, I had, indeed, broken through at least five times. The first time a five-foot slate of ice crumpled below me, causing my being to drop a foot, I squealed like Angelina Jolie spotting an Asian orphan. I didn't get wet, though, and since I know the creek I was on isn't particularly deep, I kept going. And breaking through.

After a bit, one of my skis was caked in two inches of ice and would no longer glide. I was snowshoeing on skis on a semi-frozen creek. But, hark!, there was a birdie. Tweet, tweet, little birdie. Look at Jocelyn here, being a skiier!

Crash. Down I went again. On about the sixth whomp through into the still-running creek, my one ski had become a leaden popsicle, weighing me down. I did a weird little wet-in-a-frozen-creek version of the hokey pokey and finally managed to extract that iced-up paw from the waters below.

Since the whole point of my venture had been exercise and relaxation, and since I was feeling decidedly weighed down and anxious, I did the logical thing: I took off my skis and climbed up the side of the little canyon to the road.

It was an agreeable toddle back down the road to my car. During my walk, I considered the ambivalence that marks my relationship with skiing. I have a bit of a complex about it, what with living in an intensely-accomplished outdoorsy community. I would like to be good. I would like to hang with the big guns. I would like to be able to stop screaming in my head when I have the sticks strapped to my feet.

Odds are, that isn't going to happen. What does satisfy me is knowing that I'm doing it and that there is a certain grace in trying. I don't come from a tradition of "getting out there." Yet I'm getting out there. In the larger context of my life, the fact that I even own skis is a marvel. The fact that I willingly take them onto thin-ice-over-running-water somewhat cavalierly is nothing short of miraculous.

As is the feeling that my kids will grow up free of my athletic demons. Although I will fail them in other ways, and they will grow up to discover they lack other skills they wish they had, I can at least snarl at them in the middle of a future argument, "Listen. You know how to ski. I gave you that. So hesh up, Little Miss 'Why Can't I Play the Bassoon When All the Other Kids Can'!" (that's generally how I talk to the kids, incidentally)

For right now, when they are young, and my feelings toward them are uncluttered with too much annoyance, I can simply call it a miracle: thanks to a community program called KidSki, my kids will always find skiing natural.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of Kidski for this year. It will be Girl's third year and Niblet's first. Already, they've been in the yard this week, tootling around merrily on their skis. Niblet spends most of the time on his back, skis to the sky, eating snow. Girl, however, whips around the house in gleeful loops.

This is Girl, two years ago, when she was five.


Here is her Kidski class, the same year.











Groom built a "digger sled," which can be pulled while he skis. We took Girl out on the river with it one day, a couple seasons ago. She refused to set even one boot in it--because she insisted on skiing instead. Of course, she got all frustrated and had an enormous meltdown out there, and we had to threaten to leave her there in the snowy woodlands to grow up a feral child, raised by wolves, speaking like Jodie Foster in Nell, before she stopped her fit and allowed us to take the skis off her feet. But, hell, she wanted to ski that badly. I would have been in the sled in a trice, were I her. I was in the sled, in fact, as we waited for her to wind down, the crazy little snitter.


Girl skis across a plain of caved-in creek ice. It's always good to send out a child as a "test balloon" first, when the strength of ice is in question.

I could have used her today, as I broke through repeatedly. In her absence, though, I plowed on, gave up, and hoofed it back to the car, mentalling marveling at her easy confidence, her free-wheeling joy, on skis.


I don't get it. But I sure do admire it.

"Boreal"

(photo: Sonja Wolter)

Spring is reclining upon Northern Minnesota with unaccustomed ease. Normally, our Spring takes months to really settle in; indeed, for weeks, we get buffeted about by a variety of snowstorms, mudslides, and occasional peeps of sun, which has us all wearing swimsuits accessorized by puddle boots and ear muffs. But this year, I can hardly believe we had thirteen inches of snow fall upon us a mere few weeks ago, so completely has it all disappeared.

(Thus was our tire swing during Easter week)

In fact, we've had such a stretch of warm, sunny days that I have had to hiss, throw up my cape for protection, and retire to my casket early some days. As a pasty heat-curmudgeon, I'm already missing the snow and would welcome an announcement that another three inches might fall tomorrow.

At this news, some people would be hollering "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO" like Marlon Brando chewing up the scenery with his "STELLLLLLLA" in Streetcar Named Desire. I, however, am perverse about snow and, at the prediction of an imminent blizzard, would find my feet tapping out a happy syncopation of "It's okay/I don't care/I'll just wear/fleece underwear."

Yup, some of us just like snow. Compared to my pal, Sonja, though, I am a snow dilettante. A Minnesota native, Sonja has taken her Cold Fever to new lows: she's done several tours at posts in Antarctica, and last year she was part of a four-woman crew stationed, quite remotely, in Greenland.

While such isolated polar adventures afford endless chances for wacky and creative entertainment, such as using welding equipment to make each other Christmas gifts out of refuse, there is actual serious purpose to Sonja's sojourns. In Greenland, she did science stuff, and that's as deep as I'm going to go because typing "science stuff" pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the natural world. That, and I know herpetologists study snakes (shout out to Miss Frizzle and her Magic School Bus!). But that's all I've got.

When in Greenland, Sonja and her cohorts took measurements of a variety of things, from their tempers to snowpack, as is evidenced in this photo of Sonja measuring snow depth in what they call the "bamboo forest":














By the way, she's a babe, inn't she? She can "measure my pack" any day.

So here I sit, safely watching the springtime leeks sprinkle across the muddy trails, cursing the deer for eating our tulips, mourning the season finale of 30 ROCK, while Sonja, well, she puts my snowcrazies to shame. Back in the States, she readjusts to the hectic life of traffic and reality tv, with her frostbitten nose and amputated toes, plotting her next sojourn to

a remote outpost,

someplace colder than the Jimmy Hoffa case,

a place where the pressures of the real world recede into continual darkness

a quiet spot free of the overwhelmage of humanity.

Sounds like Alec Baldwin's next cocktail party, eh?

"Paradise White"





Look at them, those long, white, snowy lines of powder.

I spent all last weekend snorting them up.

It was quite a binge.

Two weeks ago, I was jonesing for snow.

But then I pawned my fishtank, sold some plasma, and scrounged for loose change in the sofa cushions. And whaddya know...I got me some, and after the flakes fell, I started frollicking in the stuff around the clock, neglecting sleep, friends, and work as I went on my spree.

In fact, I'm still coming down from a lost weekend of unrestrained, immoderate self-indulgence.

Some people looked at our newly-fallen gutter glitter and thought, "Well, iddn't that purty?" In our household, however, we were like Aaron Sorkin with a new coke mirror, pack of razor blades, and rolled up Benji in his quivering hands: we went a little wacky on the junk.

We got amped on skijoring.

We got high from the howls of of sled dogs.

We ate weasel dust tossed onto our faces by a slew of runners at the start of the 2007 U.S. National Snowshoe Championships outside of Minneapolis (you rocked it, Groom!).

Seven kilometers into the race, Groom redefined "blow" as he whooshed past.

Because our addiction naturally translates into a cycle for the children, even Girl took off down the dusty roads.

A little later in the day, a friend and I (shout out to i-jim!) reveled in Lady Snow, as well, running the Citizens' race at the championships; #102 suits me, doncha think? And note how my triumphant finish rallied the crowd, rousing them to a series of cheers and chants of "Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn." Either that, or they spurred me to the finish line through their passionate indifference.

After racing off our jitters, we spent the rest of the afternoon inner tubing down those long lanes of powder that started this post. At the end of each run, we'd stop and mist a little Ocean Spray up our nostrils, just to fool the bouncers.

Later, in the absence of any national championship, though, we still continued our toot through Mama Blanca, hefting the kids off the deck (There's a sink or swim moral here, right? We're really just giving the kids a lesson of the streets).

And now, at the end of my binge, I feel like I've been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, I'm shaking and wet, and I'm reconciled to taking about twelve steps towards Spring.

Time to look at green buds for a few months, drag out the flip-flops, and dim the snow lights.