Maybe it was all those Republicans

Maybe it was all those Republicans. It would be easy to blame them. There have been more global warming deniers in our state for the past year than is natural for any state. Nature responded by giving us balmy weather. Temperatures reached nearly sixty degrees this week. It didn’t work. The only time global warming came up during the Iowa Caucuses was when someone accused someone else of believing in it.

Last night, the wind came up and the temperatures plummeted. I worked late and as I walked to my car the air smelled of snow. This morning when I let Maggie out, the ground was covered and it was snowing in earnest. When I look at the street light there is an even, steady fine mist of snow cascading in front of it. In summer, this is a “good old fashioned Iowa soaker,” a long gentle steady rain that lasts for hours.

In winter, this is the kind of snow that calls out to you. It will be dry and fluffy. Under my cross country skis it will be slick and a little crunchy. If the air stays cool, cooler than twenty five degrees or so, the snow brushes off easily when you fall.

Two summers ago I found some 1960’s Finnish touring skis at a used sporting goods store. They are 200 centimeters long, made of laminated wood. They were well loved but largely intact. Someone had removed the old three-pin bindings and put more modern, but now obsolete, Salomon bindings on. When I removed the bindings I discovered that the holes in the skis perfectly matched the new bindings from the skis I hoped to replace.

Cross country skiing involves kicking and gliding. For the uninitiated: a cross country ski boot is essentially “hinged” at the tip of the toe, where it attaches to the ski using the binding. This allows the skier to kick with one ski and glide with the other. For downhill activity and turning, one bends one’s knees, engages one’s heels and uses the skis’ edges much as one would use a downhill ski.

I have friends who are truly beautiful cross country skiers. They use Telemark skis with metal edges and cut long elegant turns, bending sinuously at the waist and knee. I love to watch them. I am getting too old to follow them.

Cross country skiing is a lot like running. As you kick and glide you fall into a wonderful groove. The better your skis glide, the less you work. I am a fairly large man and I develop substantial momentum, which helps carry me along, much in the way one can get into an easy long distance rhythm on a bicycle or in a kayak. Even in fairly cold weather, skiers generally don’t require much more than a shell and some long underwear. We generate our own heat.

Perversely, my favorite thing about cross country skiing is going uphill. In order to do this, a person has to manage something called “the duck walk.” This involves angling the tips of one’s skis outward and leaning forward, turning the skis slightly so that the inside edge of the ski digs into the snow, for grip. Poles are positioned behind, mostly for balance, one hopes.

The skier then leans uphill using the poles for balance and walks up the hill alternating inside edges of skis. This works better if you don’t stop. Sliding backward is not recommended. Once you get the hang of it, it’s an amazing thing to be able to do. Once you can do it, you’re self-sufficient. You can ski down any hill you can climb. There’s a metaphor for life in there, somewhere.

1-20-12

I spent last weekend in a sacred spot. One of the best kept secrets in Iowa, which is one of the best kept secrets in the United States, is the very Northeast quadrant of the state. North of Decorah, along the Minnesota border, the landscape undulates, ridge upon ridge, valley after valley. Each valley sports its own fresh water creek, many of which are stocked with trout, and a few of which still contain Iowa Brook Trout from the same genetic line as those which originally populated these streams. These are beautiful, almost neon colored fish, which we catch respectfully, when we catch them at all, and release.

Through some act in a previous life, I earned some fine friends, who introduced me to this patch of earth about 25 years ago. Since then, when life becomes complicated (about twice a year) we converge on a cabin, thoughtfully and lovingly constructed by Mark Faldet and his father Mel, and work together to lower our collective blood pressure with humor, intelligence, libations and hearty doses of the outdoors. Last weekend, my friends fished the icy waters of Bear Creek while I shuffled around on my cross country skis with a camera.The temperature dropped to about zero the night before, as the sky cleared, revealing a brilliant rural night sky, and accumulating truly ambitious frost structures on everything left exposed. There are some places in which a photographer cannot fail. I could have set the camera to shoot at random intervals.To the west of where I live is the Mesquawki Indian Settlement. The Mesquawki, named the Sac and Fox by considerate white folks, had the foresight to purchase the land they settled. It is not a “reservation,” and they were not sent there. They chose the spot. I’m not an expert on Mesquawki cosmology, but my understanding is that those who hold to the old ways believe that on the land they chose there are portals to the afterlife. These sacred places are known only to the initiated.In my own personal cosmology, there are such places. One is a certain bend of the Ohio River in Southern Illinois where my father grew up. I have found great peace and wonder there. In the sparsely populated country between Decorah and the Minnesota border is another such place, and I’m grateful for the friendship that brings me back there again and again.