Nothing's Changed

The first week of February will find us in Munising, Michigan for the annual Ice Fest.

Every year people descend on Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, decked out in helmets and harnesses, and clomp around in hulking Frankenstein boots, crampons and ice axes slung over their shoulders. They head out to the Curtains, or the Amphitheater, of the Dryer Hose, in search of beautiful waterfalls frozen into climbable ice.

You need a lot of ego to climb a frozen waterfall. And endurance, nimbleness, a good belayer. But mainly, you've got to have something to prove. It doesn't have to be big, and maybe it's only to yourself. But something to prove - yep, the key ingredient to ice climbing.

Last year, five months pregnant, I definitely had something to prove. Nothing's different, nothing's changed. I can still do what I have always done. This baby is not going to slow me down.

I should tell you here that I'm not an ice climbing superstar. I usually go once a year, and I get a lot of help from my belayer about where to place my axe and what the easiest route to the top will be. But I love getting to the top. I love swinging that axe. I love coming back to the hotel, muscles aching, and sitting in the hot tub.

How much could a five month-old fetus change anything? The biggest problem I figured was the twenty extra pounds I was carrying. Okay, so maybe it would be some more work. And maybe the hot tub wouldn't await me at the end. So what? I'd be able to say I'd still climbed ice, pregnant and all.

I signed up for the chicks' class with my three sisters-in-law. It was a beautiful day - sunny and warm. We headed out to the climb with a great teacher. I volunteered to be one of the first climbers and approached the wall. My belayer called, "Climb On," and I swung that axe. Swing, swing, kick, kick. Things were going well, I was making my way up. And then, maybe twenty feet off the ground, a surprisingly loud voice in my head said:

"What the hell are you doing up here? You're five months pregnant! GET OFF THE ICE."

I couldn't go any further, despite everyone cheering me on. I came down, tried to shake it off. Get up there again, I told myself. I tried, made it about halfway. Tried again, couldn't do it. My sister-in-law and I climbed side-by-side. I felt confident with her beside me, till my axe slipped out of the ice and I brought it down, feeling it catch on her leg. I looked over, horrified: no broken skin, just torn pants. I couldn't stop shaking, came down again. The belayer said come on, try it again. Maybe she thought I needed to build my confidence, get back on the horse. Instead, muscles stiff, I made it about halfway before I let go of the axes and fell on the rope about six feet. My axes remained up in the ice. "Climb up to get them," somebody called to me. I couldn't do it. I got down and watched while someone else climbed up to get my axes.

A pretty miserable day. On the van ride back to the hotel, I talked with my sisters-in-law about having a baby. I sulked, nursing my hurt pride. I couldn't ignore the truth. Things had changed. And I knew that things were going to change a whole lot more.

This year, I didn't even go out to the climb. I stayed at the hotel with my son and his cousins and my sisters-in-law. I skied, maybe an hour. I swam in the pool. I played with all the kids. You know something? It was the best Ice Fest yet.

To be Hope

Seventeen year ago, when I was a moody, wandering, depressed nineteen year-old college student, I developed an obsession with the tv show thirtysomething. I was a young teenager when the show first aired, and didn’t pay attention, until living in an upstairs room of a house, isolated, wanting to be someone else, I discovered late night reruns on lifetime television. When everyone else was asleep, I would sneak downstairs and eat two bowls of ice cream and watch Michael and Hope, Elliot and Nancy, Melissa, and what was Hope’s best friend’s name? The one with the sexy voice? I wanted to be her. I wanted the voice. But really, I wanted to be Hope. Perfect looking, perfectly married, perfectly together, perfect mother; her biggest problem was that her husband (very cute, very creative) didn’t notice the laundry to carry it downstairs. He would only carry it downstairs after she asked him to. Pshaw.

For about a year and a half, I disappeared from my own life into their life for an hour each day. I bought the soundtrack. I pretended a lot. I was an acting student – wasn’t this practice? Eventually, I think the reruns stopped, or I moved and no longer had cable television.

And now here I am, 36 years-old, with a new toy called Netflix. Last night I searched thirtysomething. Yep – all four seasons. I took a chance. Would it be as good as I remembered? Would it hold up to time? Or would it go the way of other things I loved in my youth because I wanted to escape into them, rather than because they were quality (Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love, for instance).

Season One, Episode Four: “Couples.”

In the spirit of Rashomon, a couples’ evening devolving into an argument between husband and wife is told from four points of view, interspersed with an assignment to create an ad for a plastic surgeon, culminating in a kids’ backyard birthday party and – at last! – Michael and Hope realizing that their fight about the washing machine had no major significance, that their friends are really the ones with marital trouble. They kiss and hold each other for dear life in the messy kitchen. Cut to WG Snuffy Walden’s catchy theme.

Oh joy! It holds up! It’s melodramatic in just the right way, lit with just the right tinge of realism, Michael appears without his shirt, Hope wears a dress slit open in the back in that special 80’s style. There’s the perfect amount of insecurity, heart-to-heart talks, and comedic supporting players. And their quirky, mysterious boss Miles hasn’t even entered the scene yet.

While watching this on my laptop, pureeing corn and butternut squash, pouring it into tiny jam jars for a seven month-old with an enormous appetite, there it was, staring me in the face: this was my life. I had gotten my nineteen year-old wish: I had become Hope.

Now, to be true, I don’t parade about in short t-shirts and bikini underwear. But I do suffer from the up and down moods of taking care of a baby all day. Some days when Mark comes home, I grab him and kiss him; other days, I'm ready to pound the bugs on the walls with his racquetball shoe (we have neither bugs nor racquetball shoes, but I could relate). I have some work that takes me out of the house, and, unlike Hope, I'm usually excited to leave and be an adult sans kid for a while. We also never see Hope in her pajamas at noon. But, all in all, the truth is there: I have become a thirtysomething wife and mother. Seventeen years of traipsing about to find myself, and I land where I wanted to be from the very start.

The treasure is always buried under our feet, right? But on the journey to find it, we see how beautiful the pyramids are.

Backyard Conversations

Yesterday afternoon I was hauling groceries into the house while my neighbor was taking out her recycling.

"Hi Betty!"
"Oh, it's cold, eh?"
"Yah!"
"For sure!"

Our backyard conversations are brief in January.

I'm not even from Minnesota. I've only been here two years. But there's something about subzero double-digit temperatures that suddenly I'm talking funny. -22 degrees this morning at the Duluth airport. Yah, it's cold. You betcha, for sure.

Sunrise over an icy lake, flanked by plenty of vertical rainbows.

Ode to Lester Park

In the heat wave of 21 degrees on Monday, we headed out for a cross-country ski at dusk, along the lit trails of Lester Park.

Lester Park was the biggest and best surprise of moving to our new house in Duluth. One July afternoon I went out for a run to the city park nearby. "City Park" in Duluth = 12+ kilometers of trails for biking and hiking, two rivers, old bridges, white-tailed deer, and the extraordinary ability to disappear in balsam fir, white spruce, cedars and birch. After an hour of traipsing trails I arrived back home and called Mark, breathless, "You'll never guess what's in our backyard...."

On Monday evening, we made our way through the fresh snow, glowing opal in the hue of an overcast sunset. For a bit we skied side by side, our baby laughing as he watched me striding with poles. I don't know what he thought we were stuffing him into the backpack for every weekend, but now he knows. For the last half of the trail, as we glided down in fresh powder, most of the trail was dark, the woods still except for the soft thump of snow falling from high-up balsam branches, and two owls cooing to each other.

Some winter nights are perfect, and meant to be lived outside.

Other nights are meant to stay inside. We now launch into the annual January freeze: this week, high temperatures around 2, lows around -20.

I don't think we have enough hand warmers to justify taking the kid out in this.

Low Temperature Threshold

My dad, a Neenah, Wisconsin native, recently advised me that ten degrees seemed to him the safe threshold for taking kids outside.

I think we broke that barrier last weekend.

For my husband Mark's birthday, we took a trip up the North Shore for a three-day ski extravaganza. Now, with a six month-old baby, "extravaganza" doesn't have quite the same punch as it used to. Instead of an all-day, all-out, telemarking 50K of back country trails (a bit of an exaggeration), we planned to explore some of the fantastic cross-country ski trails along the North Shore for as long as our son would tolerate the Kelty backpack. About two hours a day. The problem? The temperature.

Our first day in the woods: 5 degrees.

But not to worry. He's an amenable little guy, and while he objects to the half hour of dressing it takes to get stuffed into the backpack like a sardine, he loves it once he's out there.

His outdoor wardrobe, in order of assembly: Red moose long underwear, fleece onesie, fleece sweatshirt, cotton sweater, another pair of fleece pants, snowpants, flannel coat, mittens covered by socks, and on his feet, leather boots, covered by another pair of heavy socks. The secret to keeping his feet warm? Hand warmers inside the socks. On top of all this, once inside the backpack, he's covered with another blanket, and then the whole contraption is covered in Mark's down coat. Is he fashionable? For the North Woods, absolutely.

And we got to try out some of the best cross-country ski trails. Deer Yard for some deep woods traipsing, Pincushion Mountain for some in-town Grand Marais views of Lake Superior, Bally Creek for "old school" single tracks through snow-covered forests, and Sugar Bush to top it off. All hail green wax, hand warmers, and a final day temperature of 22 degrees.

Sunrise over Lake Superior from our room at the Cascade Lodge.

Family photo on our last morning skiing.