Category: Life at Tuscarora Lodge

6 hours seems like forever. It sure did for me as I trudged into Dittman on Tuesday morning with my crinkly bag lunch and shrugged into an equally crinkly white suit that didn’t quite feel like it was made to be worn by a live person. As we gathered the last painting supplies and perched ourselves on our stools, prepared for 6 hours in that 4×4 square, I wondered how on earth I was going to survive the day.

After 45 minutes, however, people started venturing by the gallery. We reached out to them—offering fresh-poured cups of paint to use to cover our white canvas suits and a few came in and added splotches of color or words or stories or names or insults or lyrics or signatures. More and more people came, and we were eventually no longer timid in our project advertisement—hollering down the hall to attract bypassing strangers.

During the time when our squares weren’t flocked with painters, I could look out over the 31 other wooden platforms and just watch what other people’s lives were occupied by—paper airplaning and poetry and clay and books and paper cranes—a pinkish sea full of 4×4 squares blooming with creation.

It made me realize that everyone is living in his or her little slice of forever. I don’t normally think about how segregated that can be, because I’m too busy bustling about in my own world but when everyone’s little forevers are all gridded out in a single room, I can truly analyze individual tendencies and what makes each person tick.

What if my purpose is actually trying to bring everyone else’s stories together? Mash them all together into one crazy, colorful painted suit; parallel the guy who’s son had just died with the budding rapper who was really struggling to get his name out there; the kind voice of the pastor with the girl who didn’t believe in using brushes and instead finger-painted swirling stripes across my stomach.

No matter how different each person’s style was, their lives sort of blended into this crazy streaking picture that somehow fit together, with newcomers filling in the holes that others may have missed.

Life really sparkles when I can share my little bit of forever with people; give them a paintbrush and let them into my square. Each individual is just burning to tell his or her story and I’m actually genuinely interested, which kind of took me by surprise. I’m often moving so fast I forget to take the time to actually ask people about their lives.  But the experience left this great feeling all bubbled up inside of me, and I’m going to try and keep it there…forever.

The Polar Vortex hit the north woods along with the rest of the Midwest in January.   The thing is, people in Cook County are accustomed to occasionally hitting 40 below zero.  20 below is so regular….and often sunny and still–that this is not typically when school is closed, this is when we felt safe sending our  kids out to play.   You know, as long as they were smart about it, and bundled.   I have really good memories of dark December shuttles to the mailbox/bus stop.   As we drove away from the Round Lake the car temperatures would drop through the -30s, and  the kids would chant  FOUR–ty, FOUR….ty, FOUR….ty…and then cheer when the car thermometer would get there.   (I don’t have to say Fahrenheit or Celsius because the graphs meet at -40.  I love that, by the way.  It is just plain cold).

But now, we spend  good chunks of our winter lives with the rest of the city population, so we often are dressed improperly, and we tend to rush from the car to the house on busy days.  We immediately lose our heartiness and 20 above can have us shivering and grumbling with everybody else.  We do appreciate the privilege of savoring the northwoods in the same way our guests do–and spend as much time as we can in the off season–at home where the hearty people live.

photo by Shelby

Shelby passed a couple moose on the Gunflint Trail a few weeks ago.  Note how healthy they are, showing off the calisthenics involved to get at the tasty salt.   It’s always a treat to see these guys, because everything we read these days makes us feel like we might be witnessing their extinction.

Photo by Nace Hagemann (see nacehagemann.com)

Sightings aren’t so rare on the Gunflint Trail, but apparently on the decline–due to a complex formula involving several different variables.   I do know that the moose are happiest with these cold temperatures.  Well, the  scientists haven’t actually attempted to measure the moose happiness, but they have measured how much the mortality rate goes up when moose are stressed—which tends to be whenever the temperature rises above 23 degrees in January.

Have you heard that the emerald ash borer larvae start dying off at -20 degrees?   Increased Lake Superior ice cover this time of year means less evaporation in July. Who can complain about a Polar Vortex with those kinds of side effects?   The kudzu down south cannot creep up into the cold north.  Let’s face it, the moose are native, the non-native species haven’t had thousands of years to evolve to the polar heartiness.    That’s enough to celebrate the glacial temperatures when we can get them.

photo by Shelby (note  8 legs)

So we put on our layers of down—and when I’m all bundled up I add one last detail over my top jacket…my parka that happens to be the exact same model that Chevy Chase wore to cut down the Christmas tree and ride his speedy sled in Christmas Vacation.  The cold is so sunny and still,  I swear it scrubs my lungs clean, and must be killing any sort of invasive species in there—because—obviously Clark Griswold and I have evolved for this.  So, let’s just celebrate the freezing, Let’s celebrate the temperatures where the snow falls (20 above) and the temperatures where the snow squeaks (20 below).  Let’s snowshoe at dusk, and breathe the snow that scrubs the air, and cherish the hearty remaining wooly moose.