Winter Lovers

We weren’t sure what we were looking for but we decided it wasn’t in Arizona.

Our plan was to head there this morning in our truck with our two dogs to meander around and maybe see some baseball at spring training.

And then just like a flipped switch, we nixed it. This morning. Pretty much when my husband said “it’s going to be 80 degrees in Phoenix today” and I thought I really hate being hot.

So I think we are heading north to Lake Superior where it isn’t hot, and where there is still snow on the ground, maybe big drifts of it, and where we can ski and possibly take our snowshoes off the shelf downstairs and hike down the beach following the tracks of the deer herd that winters near our place. If they come on their daily stroll, they will be surprised to see us. It has been a long time.

We’ve closed our house on Lake Superior during the winter for the past three or four years. We did that because every time we went in the winter, there would be some terrible problem – a burst pipe, a frozen septic tank – that always involved melting snow and peeing in a bucket. Roughing it was not that bad, it was roughing it in addition to the million phone calls to repair people and then suffering their home boy sympathy for our ‘summer people’ screw-up. And the price tag.

But it’s close enough to spring that we can have it both ways. Have the plumber come and ‘open’ the house, do all the official turning on of the water rituals in the most perfect way, have snow still be on the ground, have snow still falling, and have the deer herd soundlessly treading past our window.

We will wear layers and our dogs will run without leashes and everyone will come in out of the cold and snow healthy and tired.

I can’t wait.