Closing Out the Year in the Cold

I write this morning from a place I wasn’t supposed to be at.

For the second time in about a month a blizzard tore through the Upper Peninsula, shut down the power to our cabin and threatened our plumbing. So, for the second time in a month I hopped in the car and drove the five hours north to light a fire.

It’s not an efficient way to heat a cabin, but I figure I can get the temp up about five to ten degrees and that should be enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Yeah, yeah, I know. We should get a generator or a wood-burning stove. That’s in the hopper for the family capital projects committee, of which I am only one ineffectual member.

But I have to admit that in some ways it’s not so bad. I pulled in after sunset on Monday to find about a foot and a half of fresh snow in the driveway and on the stairs leading down to the cabin. I plunged through it, opened the cabin, noted with relief the temperature of 39 degrees inside and started a fire.

Then I grabbed a shovel and cleared my way back up to the garage, where I fired up the trusty old snowblower. I spent the better part of an hour clearing a path for the car to the garage and tucked the trusty Honda into bed.

Then, covered in snow from the snowblower aided by a howling wind out of the northwest, I returned down to the cabin, where I changed into some warm, dry clothes and basked in the toastiness of the cabin, which had achieved 43 degrees within ten feet of the fireplace. I made myself a ham sandwich and warmed up some clam chowder. I popped open a Satin Solitude imperial stout from Stevens Point’s Central Waters Brewery — the best winter brew there is, in my humble opinion.

I sat in my big beat-up red leather chair, covered up in the two thickest afghans we have and ate and drank in front of the fire, which was consuming two-years-old dead birch from our small piece of land and which I had split last May. With the aid of the same headlamp that gets me to my deer stand on opening morning of gun deer season, I read a book. Then I dozed off and I spent the night like that, getting up every hour or so to feed the fire.

Yesterday I needed some real warmth. So, I went up to the LVD Cafe in Watersmeet for my breakfast. The LVD Cafe is homey and the food is both good and inexpensive. The service is friendly, but kind of slow. I waited an hour for my corned beef hash and eggs sunny side up. Not only did I not care, I was grateful to spend an extra hour in a warm cafe drinking not bad coffee and reading the newspaper.

I came back to the cabin to fire up the fire for a while longer. I took my usual afternoon nap and noticed how quiet the cabin was. It’s not like there’s a whole lot of noise in our corner of the north woods at the end of December anyway, but you forget how much noise a furnace makes as well as the occasional intrusive dings from this device or that. Modern existence is filled with sounds you don’t even notice until they’re not there. Then you notice how much you don’t miss them.

About 4 o’clock, in the fading light, I got up and drove down to Land O’ Lakes to the Gateway Lodge for dinner. The Gateway is a venerable old place (Eisenhower played golf there) and it has a cozy bar, where I enjoyed an old fashioned — $4.50 at happy hour. The place was jammed with snowmobilers. Now, I’m a silent sports guy myself, but I’ve come around on the loud sports crowd. They oil the local economy and, with little or no snow the past two seasons, they and their money have stayed down in Chicago or wherever. It was good to see them back and, I hate to admit this, but I find them fun and polite to be around. A lot of them were from Illinois — I could tell from the Bears regalia — but while a rerun of the Packers’ loss to the Ravens played on the television sets (why?!), they graciously ignored it. (I also tried to ignore it — though sullenly.)

Then I moved into the big dining room where I had the dinner special, which was pot roast and mashed potatoes in gravy, and the soup, which was beer-cheese and ham. There may have been another cocktail involved along the way. Then I went out into the lobby with its A-frame timber ceiling, it’s giant fireplace — you could walk into it — and it’s Christmas trees, and sat down in a comfortable old chair to read a book for awhile. I was waiting for the official notification from WE Energies that power had been restored. That came at about 6:30 PM, almost two full days after the power had gone out.

It was welcome news. Living without heat, light or running water and surrounded by a couple feet of snow and single-digit temperatures pressing into your cabin may sound like fun for us hardy Midwesterners, but it can get old pretty quick. There’s a lot to be said for hot showers.

When I got back to the cabin I turned on the water pump and, sure enough, water coursed through the pipes. They weren’t frozen. Mission accomplished. I am a plumbing hero.

Now, after only a day, it’s time for me to saddle up and drive south with the aim of getting back to Madison in time for a New Year’s Eve open house in our neighborhood. It runs from 4PM to 8PM, but there’s no way Dianne and I are going to stay out to the ridiculous hour of 8 o’clock. Are you nuts?

By then we’ll be snuggled in our condo, where the heat is always on, the water always flows and the lights never go out — somewhat sadly.

Enjoy your New Year’s Eve. I hope you had a wonderful year and that there are is warmth and light in the year ahead — but not too much.