Crazy winter is finally here! ~ February 22, 1990

David Heiller

It’s amazing how a little snow can make us Minnesotans feel whole again. And a little nuts too.

Last Thursday night, eight inches of snow blew in on us during the night. And it transformed our lives:

·             Randy Gordon, manager of Banning State Park, saw what he thought had been placed on the endangered species list: cross country skiers. He’s seen more bats in his bat caves than skiers this winter.

·             Banning Junction saw another endangered species: a paying customer who actually arrived by snowmobile.

·             LeRoy Cronin saw yet another endangered species, Alexander Hamilton, who graced the 10-spot I paid him for plowing our driveway. (LeRoy is worth every Lincoln penny.)

·             Tom Brabec, running out of time on a super cross-country ski sale at T&M Athletics, saw snowflakes and mistook them for pennies from Heaven, and he saw still another endangered species: customers coming to buy cross-country skis.

·             Deane Hillbrand, a friend and neighbor, made a big pile of snow and dug a cave into it and promised to the world that he was going to SLEEP in it. And he’s not even married. Call it Will Steger Fever. February blizzards in a barren winter do strange things to people.

·             And kids, oh how they went nuts. They dug out their plastic sleds and cleaned the rust off their Flexible Flyer runners. Some even found their Tonka toys—graders, backhoes, dump trucks - and started moving the snow around like glorified Gus Jorgensens.

The sauna is the little shack behind us.

YES, I ADMIT ONE OF MY oars left the water too. Our family takes a sauna every Sunday night. Usually in the winter, that means washing and sweating and sitting and sweating and scratching and sweating and pacing and sweating and finally, running outside and diving into the snow, where the sweat instantly turns into cold, sharp steel needles.

Harvey Williams and his family usually know when this happens. Screams carry a long way on February nights.

But Harvey has been wondering why we are so quiet this year, and it’s because we haven’t had much snow to roll in. Just a thin glacier, and with two dogs and a middle-aged man roaming the yard, you don’t just go rolling on any old snow by the sauna. You make sure it’s soft and clean and white.

So last Sunday night as we undressed in the sauna, I announced that I was going to roll in the snow. I said it early in the hopes that Cindy might talk me out of it. “Uh-huh” she said with great vigor, climbing to the top bench by the stove.

“You want to try it?” I asked. I ask it every year, and Cindy has yet to answer me. This is a woman who has a custom-made electric blanket. The only setting is a nine.

“I’ll do it, daddy,” Noah volunteered. “I did it before, remember?”

“I remember you running around outside and pretending to lay down and running back in,” I said grandly.

“Well that was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Cindy said with that CERTAIN tone of voice.

“Yeah, that was great, Noah,” I said. How do you argue with a naked woman in a sauna? Twenty minutes later, we were ready. Noah went first. I guess our son is growing up, because this time he actually lay down on his back long enough to make half an angel before leaping up and dashing back into the sauna. Half a second naked on six inches of fresh snow proves Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: it’s a lloooonnnnggggg time.

I went next, lasting at least a full second on both front side and back. Mollie had pulled a chair up to the door of the sauna and was looking at me as I ran back. I almost knocked her into the wood stove going inside. That was enough for me. What a strange sensation. The snow is so cold that it feels like burning coals. You dash yourself with warm water, and feel that your skin is like ice. Then you cool UP, then warm up, then in about five minutes you’re scratching and sweating again.

Noah had to one-up me then. He headed out for a second dose. I let him win.

Later, when Noah was lying in bed all warm and squeaky clean, he said winter was his favorite season. I asked why, expecting a six­year-old essay on the joys of a sauna.

“Because there are no mosquitoes and wood ticks,” he said. Then he asked the question that has stumped theologians through the eons: “I wonder why God made mosquitoes and woodticks?”

I couldn’t answer. I have enough trouble figuring out why Ι jump in snow banks. But at least I don’t sleep in snow caves.