Joanie's winter fat bike park

[north woods gal]

We've lived up here for eight years, now. Snow and winter are such a big part of life in the north woods that I'm now at a point where it's even hard to remember what it was like to live in places with milder winters. You can't wait out the snow or the cold until the weather moderates, up here, like you can in other places. You have to embrace winter and adapt or, as some do, get the hell out of town for the winter. We know very few that take that option, though. Most stay and make the most of our winters. I think it does mark a person.

My mother grew up in northern Minnesota. She used to tell me stories about how she used to ski or snowshoe to elementary school and how all the kids loved to ice skate in the winter. It's what they got to do at recess. When it came time for her to retire from her job in Nebraska, she headed right back to the north country and her beloved winters. All her colleagues thought she was nuts. They all had plans to move as far south as it took to escape snow and cold winters, but not her. She couldn't wait to get back to her north woods and what she called "real winters".