Real Minnesota Weather
The weather changes overnight. There’s a thunderstorm with lightning that wakes us all. In the morning, temperatures are up above freezing, and it’s raining intermittently.
When we go outside, the snow is softer, sinking beneath my boots. The icicles on the barn have grown, and anywhere that isn’t snow is mud.
We’ve been waiting for the weather to change, unfreezing the trees. At 37 degrees, this is the warmest it’s been yet.
Eileen and I head into the sugar bush to check the pails, and for once they’re not frozen solid. We pour meltwater out of the bags, leaving the bigger ice chunks to keep thawing.
In the evening, another thunderstorm hits while we’re up the road playing with Ert’s brother’s little girls. The one year old is mobile, a fast scooter and very smiley. The three year old, tippytoe with energy, wants to play hide and seek and treasure hunt and chase the monster.
We watch out the window as the rain turns suddenly to blizzard. The girls marvel at the snowflakes, and I’m amazed too: snow builds up and slides with a thump off of the metal roof.
By the time we’re ready to head home, there are several inches of fresh, snowman-quality snow covering everything, and more falling fast.
In the morning, the driveway needs plowing and the trees are bent over, but the sun is warm in the cerulean sky.
Because we’re cartographers and can’t help it, we’ve been mapping the property. Ert, apparently, built a bridge back in the woods that isn’t on the map yet, so we’re given directions and snowshoes to go find it.
The woods shimmer crystalline, bright sun refracting in icicles and shining through last year’s yellowed leaves. We cut a path along the low ridge, across the frozen pond. Chickadees call from the trees, and red squirrels leave bounding tracks in the snow.
Back at the house, Mary Ann and Bill are in full preparation for their annual maple syrup party. Tables and benches must be moved, snacks laid out, labels taped on baskets. Mary Ann has made two soups and two loaves of bread. I take up precious kitchen space fixing kardemumabullar, substituting maple for the glazing sugar syrup.
Guests arrive in a trickle to the plastic chairs by the sugar shack, each with something to share: Irish cream brownies, wine from a neighbor’s vineyard, zucca ghanoush, oatmeal raisin cookies. The little girls scoop handfuls of snow to handle and eat.
In the warmth of the day, I peel off outer jacket, hat, gloves, scarf, extra sweater, and sit in my snow pants with the little ones.
We’ve been told not to go telling stories about Minnesota and terrible weather, but I see little to complain about here: we’ve had several seasons in a week, and today feels like the beginning of the thaw.
I recruit Eileen and the vivacious three year old to go and check the pails again, and Mary Ann comes to help as the little girl sing-song steps in every boot track.
We follow the trail that’s been worn through the snow into the sugar bush. Sure enough, for the first time since I’ve been here, every sap collector is thawed enough to pour, at least a little bit.
Hauling five gallon buckets and breaking fresh trail in my rubber boots is warm work. Our dauntless mascot, two hours past her naptime, helps to pour a couple of smaller buckets into the refrigerator, then sits down to play while we check the rest: sixty taps, and much more to carry when the taps are flowing.
Work finished, I lie back in the fresh snow. Above me, I watch blue sky through the branches of a big old sugar maple, and listen to the snow falling off of trees and the quiet ringing plops of sap droplets falling into pails.
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