The Little Death

Several weeks ago, when I visited Sharon Rizk in Pecos, New Mexico, I walked with her neighbors, walking their dogs, in the snow each morning.  One of them said, “I’m tired of snow.”  But I knew I had not seen the worst of it.   

Later in Iowa and northern Minnesota, I heard comments from locals implying that winter is a drab place of blacks and whites and dreary grays.  “March usually brings warmings,” said Jerry Netland, owner of the Voyageur Motel

People who live in the far north don’t go out much, and they sleep more.  Some of them brave the cold for the pure joy of it, but not most.  They stay inside and make things or talk about spring, but they don’t go outside much, except in their cars.  Maybe that’s why they call winter “The little death.”  People in warmer climates use that expression in other ways, but in the far north it seems to fit.   

In Butte, Montana, I saw the first copper mine of 1878 that started a pollution problem that Superfunds are still trying to clean up. 

And this open pit copper mine is still in operation, though supposedly not harming the environment as the first hundred years of mining this mountain did.   

Looking back on that venture into the far north, I shushed through the snow for a while, and now it is over.  Arriving in eastern Washington, was like sighting land after crossing an ocean.  It’s fifty degrees here with no ice, no snow, except on distant mountains. Yesterday, the huge Coeur d'Alene Lake had no ice, and Canadian geese looked happy.   

I am now in Pacific time zone, just a day’s drive from Port Angeles, where I spent a month last September and October.  I hope to see if the sign at Hurricane Ride is really true.

Michael Angerman has prepared an interactive map showing my nightly stops.     Michael's Map