The Foehn

Dave and I sat here this morning drinking our coffee and tea, enjoying the striking view of the frozen lake in front of us. It looks like a great expanse of frozen tundra. It almost seems like a herd of caribou might gallop past us. There is the crunching of ice as though under the hoofs of many reindeer. We squint into the glare of the morning sun and crane our necks to see.

A Chevy rolls past us on the ice.

Our imagined caribou herd disappears and we resume sipping as the ice fishermen drag their sleds full of gear across the slippery surface and unfold their hammock chairs to settle in for a long day.

Despite the constantly increasing number of bob houses that have assembled like a Vietnamese village in our “front yard”, our hopes are high that spring is near. Though the Vernal Equinox is still two weeks away and the sun does not warm the air past thirty degrees on a cloudless day, there are signs that spring is returning.

One morning last week, we poked our noses outside and were pleasantly surprised by a gentle caress of warm air. Standing on the porch barefoot in our pajamas, we grinned and watched as the roof dripped in rivulets onto the snow below. A sudden warm wind whipped around the house and sent the dripping water spraying into our faces. The Foehn had arrived.

When we reach the end of January we are disappointed that it is quickly followed by a cold and gray February. We find ourselves irritated and anxious as the sun is still low and the daylight is brief. We have quick tempers and pick arguments over small things. It is said that before the Foehn blows, ill feelings explode. In wintertime, if you are feeling edgy, sulky, or morose, you can be sure that the Foehn is near.

With the warm wind came rain. We woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain on our roof for the first time in five months. The warm sun of the day had miraculously melted all of the snow on the roof, and we snuggled into our pillows to the gentle pitter-patter of spring on the eves.

The dramatic change in the environment is short lived. The next day the temperature plummeted back down to twenty degrees. We continue to smile contentedly knowing that spring has not forgotten about us. The stream next to our house has begun to run again under the snow and we listen to it burbling. Though there will undoubtedly be more snowstorms, and the thick ice on the lake will likely remain through March and some of April, rest assured that the proverbial back of winter has been broken.

After all of the rain that had blown in, the ice (that had been muffled by almost two feet of snow) has a new glossy surface. Now, instead of slogging through knee-high powder to cross the lake, we can put ice cleats on our boots and crunch across the top to visit my parents on the other side. Dave explored an abandoned fishing hole in front of our house and discovered nearly twenty inches of solid ice. The rain had soaked through the snow and it had all frozen solid into a glacier-like expanse. In some places, the ice-cover on the lake is up to three feet thick. Though the terrain is too rough for ice-skating, it can now support over 25 tons of weight. Huge pick-up trucks roll past us on the ice and park confidently in the middle of the lake. Some of the fishermen grill hamburgers and sausage on gigantic hibachis off the tongues of their trucks. The scents of this temporary fishing village waft up to us and we feel like bourgeois on the hill overlooking a small bustling town of peasants. We put on the lofty airs of shack-dwellers.

Aside from the industrious peasants below us, the new ice has more surprises. When the sun slips behind the trees at the end of the day, the temperature falls quickly. With this sudden drop, the ice expands and shifts. Fault lines develop and the massive sheets shift and grind. At night we listen to the great booms and shudders as the glacier strains and pushes against itself. From a distance, it is the sound of a huge stomach rumbling that shakes our house and rattles the teacups. When you stand on the ice, the tectonic shifts release a concussion under your feet spiking your adrenaline and sending you hopping into the air.

When I lived on the lake as a kid, our dog Jupiter would spend the long winter days pacing back and forth across the ice with his head down and his furry ears perked. When a particularly loud report shook the ice, he would leap into the air with all four feet. When his feet came back down, he would cock his ears and resume his hunt, endlessly consumed by his illusive ice prey.

We are comforted knowing that spring is on its way, yet reserved in our celebration. There is still a foot of icy white in the yard and snowy predictions for the week ahead. The freezing air numbs our fingers as we stock our wood rack in preparation for the next storm. The sun is gone by four-thirty in the afternoon, but we hunker in and turn on a lamp thankful for the hour of sunlight we have regained since the dark winter solstice. Tonight, the ice seems to be voicing a futile protest against its imminent demise. Tomorrow the sun will rise just a little bit higher than the day before.

Visitors

Time ticks slowly by as the winter months plod along with us. There is an intimidating accumulation of snow on the roof, which I continue to attend to with my homemade roof rake. We’ve managed to keep our important paths cleared of snow (to the outhouse, the wood pile, and the cars,) but the snow in the yard around us is unbroken and if you venture out into it, you’ll find yourself mired up to your thighs in it. It is a record year for snowfall – like the winter days we remember as kids when we would tunnel in the snow banks and disappear for entire afternoons in our white caves. Now, as adults, we are too busy to engage in such trivial entertainment (though in truth, I think it can be attributed almost entirely to a lack of snow pants.)

The ice fishermen are still out there before the sun comes up. They are constantly drilling holes in the ice with their gas-powered augers. They stare at us when we come out of the house to stack our wood as though we were the ones who were intruding on them. We’ve learned to ignore them for the most part now. The fishermen are legally allowed to keep their bob houses situated on the ice until the last day of March – when they are required by the state to remove them. It is likely that they will continue to fish (without their bob houses) into April. I remember a year when the ice stayed on the lake until my birthday, April 22nd. When the open water is interned for such a long winter, it’s return is often heralded by cheering and parties. When the ice goes, the silence of winter is finally broken by the lapping of the water on the shore.

Our hope is that the ice will not hang on so late this year. We are one week into February and have begun talking and fantasizing about the wonders of a warm day. We are thinking of the color of green grass. Mud would be welcomed. I have been eying the front windows and thinking about trimming them out, but the table saw is covered with a tarp and buried under snow. The forecast of 36° today has excited us. I am writing this morning to kill time as I wait for the sun to burn off the chill of last night’s -8°. I am looking forward to going outside and working up a sweat shoveling paths to nowhere. Perhaps I will stack some wood.

Aside from ice fishermen, have had one visitor this winter that seems to be new. Dave was out of town Wednesday night, and I went to bed listening to the sound of the wind banging things around outside. I woke up the next morning to see that the shack’s footings had been explored while I slept. The last snow had a hard crust on top of it, and traced back and forth around the house were the pawprints of an inquisitive visitor. The tracks circled the house several times, went under the woodpile, out across the driveway to the woods and back. It caught my attention that there were little prints that made their way to a gap in the skirt around the house. It appeared that the owner of the tracks had slipped under the house to poke around a bit. I went to the computer and looked up pictures of animal tracks to see who our new neighbor might be. Unfortunately, the most likely suspect was a skunk

It was obvious that our guest had gone exploring under the shack the night before, but in addition to the tracks leading under the house, there were also tracks leading away. There is nothing under the house but lumber and aluminum drip edge, which I assume to be of little interest to a skunk (unless he was looking for a nice warm protected place to live.) We reasoned that since there have been no more tracks under the house since the first night, we did not have much to worry about. But, Perhaps this skunk explorer is a she-skunk looking for a nice place to raise a family.

As adorable as I am sure skunk babies are, I am anxious about their taking up residence in our neighborhood – especially if she chose to nestle under our house! Our floor is no more than one layer of tongue and groove pine in some places. This house is certainly not a duplex, and odiferous new tenants in the lower quarters would be most unwelcome.

One of the best internet-recommended solutions to keep skunks away is to soak rags in ammonia and place them in the area that you want to deter them from. We decided to skip the step of getting manufactured ammonia. A couple cups of coffee in us and we can make our own! This is a new element to living in the woods; we must mark our territory “Never Cry Wolf” style.

The skunk is one of our few visitors around here, and we would not want to drive away anyone who was interested in hanging out with us. We mark our territory merely to say, “hey, this place is taken.” But we still look forward to seeing evidence of our wild neighbors since the house-dwelling ones are so few and far between on the lake in the winter.

This morning there are new tracks from our little friend. This time though, he was not wandering about. He walked straight across the yard and past our house like a skunk with a mission. Upon further exploration, I find these tracks on the ice in front of the house, down the driveway around other camps, and across the road into the woods. I am concluding that our black-and-white friend understands our concerns and respects our territory, but has places to get to that necessitate passing through our yard. So, we have a right-of-way agreement, I suppose.

Time moves more slowly through the winter months. With fewer events in our lives on these short days, the weeks plod by marked mostly by snowstorms, and much less frequently by thawing days. As these snowfalls blend into each other as indistinguishable white on the ground we forget how much time has passed and how much time still has to pass. We wonder if we are past the halfway point. A skunk passing through the yard provides us with something to think about, something to talk about. So we do that, we think and we talk, and we wait for the next thing to happen.