Winter is a Thing UP Here
Winter has arrived. With a vengeance this year. A foot of snow, temps in the teens, and 30-40 MPH winds for two days. Ready or not, it has arrived. Fortunately, most people in the UP have been ready for a month or more. Because, winter is a thing up here. A major, serious, 5-6 month thing. While most of the country sort of gets ready, and hopes winter won't cause too much inconvenience, up here, winter settles in. After today's storm, we likely won't see the ground until sometime in April. There's a saying up here, "There are two seasons in the UP, winter, and getting ready for winter." And there is a bit of truth to be found there.
When you spend 5-6 months dealing with a season, you achieve professional status. It is common to engage in lengthy conversations about different brands of snow tires, winter boots, insulated work gloves, or snow removal methods. A quality snow shovel is a prized possession. Plastic shovels are viewed with scorn, as they won't last through a winter, and will undoubtedly fail when most needed. Cheap boots leave you with wet, and promptly cold feet, which makes for a miserable day, or in a worst case scenario, frost bitten toes.
Preparation for winter is a months long exercise. Piles (large) of split and dried firewood must be ready for a long winter of heating the house, and often the sauna. "Making wood," the UP term for acquiring and preparing firewood, is difficult and tedious in the winter snow. It can be done, in a pinch, but do it once and you will be better prepared next winter. So it must be ready by the time the snow flies. The car or truck must be ready as well. Winter quickly shows the weak points in a vehicle. Battery, starter, alternator, heater, wipers, all get a sure workout during winter driving. Mediocre or "all season" tires leave you considering options regarding the most viable route to your destination. Tow trucks run steady through the winter. A four wheel drive vehicle with good snow tires means you'll likely be able to go where you choose.
Another issue, as the winter drags on, is a condition referred to as "cabin fever." It's a real thing, also referred to by locals as being "shack happy." Simply put, sitting in a house for 5 months, looking out at the snow and cold, but opting not to venture out, results in deterioration of mental status. Irritability, depression, paranoia, sleeplessness, and even manic symptoms or delusions, are all possible. The cure? Get outside. Without some winter activity, like skiing, snowshoeing, skating, ice fishing, that gets you out and exercising, 5 months is a long and sedentary stretch. It is the studied opinion of most of us that live up here, that this is the main reason the population stays at relatively small numbers. Potential transplants can't imagine spending long lengths of time outside when temps are in the teens or colder, nor can they imagine spending 6 months in the house.
We had an outdoor cat long ago who, once winter set in, ventured out less and less. After a month or two, he would not go out at all, and his behavior would get stranger and stranger. He'd get irritable and easily startled, he'd hole up in a room by himself, and finally he'd start looking around like he was seeing things. Once it got bad enough, you had to pick him up and throw him outside into a deep drift, which would snap him out of it for a month or so, after which the process would need to be repeated. He was fit as a fiddle throughout the other seasons, roaming and hunting and rarely wanting to spend time in the house.
On the upside, rare is the holiday season when we don't have a solid blanket of snow. Christmas carols like "White Christmas," "Let it Snow," "Sleigh-ride" and any other referring to snow seem to have been written specifically for us. White Christmas? Check. Lake effect snow, blowing in from Superior, looks exactly like the stuff in a snow globe. Large, fluffy, apparently weightless flakes, drifting through the light of a house window or street lamp, make for real time fantasy winter scenes. It's still pretty common for families to venture out into the woods to find and cut a spruce or balsam, drag it back to the car/truck, and haul it home for the holiday. This in a scene enhanced with falling snow. It's a wonderful and nostalgic ritual, starkly different than taking the tree out of a box and assembling it on the living room floor.
In closing, I'd say you have to like winter to live up here. The length and severity test your mettle, or as some might say, build character. You will find yourself miserable if you're trying to just get through it, you have to get into it, relish it, celebrate it.