Superior, this beautiful sea on our doorstep. But she has this habit of moderating all our temperatures!
People sometimes ask if we have air conditioning here at WindCradle and we laugh! "Yes, and her name is Lake Superior." In the summer it's never hot with all that cool water right there.
But in the winter it's almost never super cold either. Often people will say when they hear I live north, "It must be ten or twenty degrees colder up there than here in the cities." But it's not. Most mornings it's warmer because of the big lake.
Take this morning for example: it's twenty degrees (just heard it on the radio) in the Twin Cities, but here it's 35. That means we're getting rain and they're getting snow.
Yesterday we drove out of the rain up the Gunflint Trail five miles to our little church on Maple Hill. We found ourselves in a major winter storm with blowing and drifting snow. We drove back down toward the lake into rain.
This is a problem? you may ask. Well it is if you like snow, and I do. If you pictured yourself in the drama of blizzards, it's a disappointment.
When I was a girl growing up in Western Washington State, we'd sometimes get snow and it would be so exciting and then the wind would turn and I'd wake up in the night to the sound of a Chinook wind, blowing warm air and turning our snow to slush.
Lake Superior is so big and so lovely and so moderating. Maybe it's about time for me to accept her moderating influence, to not need the drama of blizzards. At least I can drive ten minutes to fine snow...
Maybe that's a gift of aging: we can lose our need for drama, and enjoy moderation and everyday beauty around us.
I guess I always heard of 'lake effect' snow, so I assumed the worst! But how fun that you can drive so short a distance to see real winter.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful pictures, by the way. Just a question - is that the same rock in the first 2 pictures? Looking one way then the other? What a beautiful sight!