Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 45
12/13/09
15:50
Before I moved to Minnesota, gloves were never on my list of things to worry about. Sure, if I knew I’d be spending an inordinate amount of time in the cold, like if I had to hide a body in a meat locker or keep a pair of black market kidneys iced up, I’d maybe make sure I grabbed a pair of work gloves.
But here? Holy shit. I wouldn’t be caught DEAD outside without a pair of neoprene, 750-fill power, lamb-lip-lined, water-proof, air-proof, battery-powered, one-size-fits-all babyskin gloves. Some mornings, you can’t get from your front door to the car without having to scrape the ice off your fingernails. And don’t you dare touch a doorknob out there. Not unless you plan to remodel your palms after that German guy’s in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Winter here makes you rethink a ton of things. Water pipe routes. Plow schedules. Emergency kits in your car. Ice thickness. How long its been since your car was started. Winter here is an opponent, not just some soggy bridge between fall and spring. But you deal with it. You check your propane every three days and hope to Christ that maybe the wind chill won’t drop the temps much under -15. And if it does get that cold? Screw it. You have nice gloves.
Here are some pictures, including fuzzy deer, a smartass rabbit, and some yahoos racing 'ice yachts' on ice that ain't been ice for too awful long.
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