First of all, it is cold here. When I say cold, I don't mean this kind of cold.
I mean that tonight it's going to be -20 degrees, the ice is booming like a thunderstorm and is seven inches thick on the lake, and tomorrow's high temp is -4 degrees. I'm not trying to be competitive or anything, I'm just trying to put it into perspective. Most people (including me) don't WANT to be outside during this weather, but for some reason I've found myself out in it even on my days off, VOLUNTARILY. The first reason is that I've been learning how to snowshoe and cross-country ski! I've learned how to cross-country ski before from my dad, who is an avid skier. He would take me on short trips through the woods or to Soldier's Hollow and attempt to plant a seed of ski love in my heart as I wobbled dangerously around on fiberglass sticks glued to my feet and fell continuously on my ass. Needless to say, I never really got into it. Also I was not, and have never really been, a winter person. However, since we teach our regularly scheduled classes, -20 degrees and ten inches of snow (I wish) or not, we need to be trained on XC skiing and snowshoeing for when we take children into the woods. Snowshoeing is easy enough, since it is basically just walking around and I have mastered that (to an extent) since I was a toddler. However, our school groups coordinator encouraged us (aka Megan and I) to practice our XC skiing for if (though hopefully when) we need to teach it to any school groups. Thus began our training regimine of ski trails around the center. I'm really terrible at it at first, basically treating it as if I'm snowshoeing and refusing to actually ski, but as I get the hang of it I feel like I can really do pretty well now that I've been practicing. That is, however, when I'm not faced with hills of any magnitude. The first thing I really need to practice is not swearing when I fall or am about to fall. I attempted this the last time we went (which was a couple of weeks ago because snowfall has been really limited, LAME) and ended up saying interesting combos of words to avoid saying the things I really wanted to screech as I landed in yet another snowbank. At one point, Chagh filmed Megan and I going down a hill that was MAYBE three feet tall. It's five minutes of me struggling to get up from my fallen position at the top of the hill as Megan prepared to slide down the hill and ends up slipping magnificently and falling onto her back. I finally managed to scramble to my feet and then went down the hill perfectly before slamming into a tree. Another gem is when I fell at the base of a hill and Megan suggested I just crawl up it, which I did. When I reached the top my skis had embedded themselves into the snow so I had to rotate my ankles in unnatural ways to get them out, at which point I claimed that I had broken my legs. Cross-country skiing is fun!
Other winter adventures include CHRISTMAS OF COURSE, when I was home in SLC for the holidays and managed to snap a few pictures during my busy re-acclimation to society.
A festive bow for Taffy's tail
Dad said I'm probably the only girl who got mac 'n cheese in her stocking. I think he might be right
What is Christmas without DINOSAURS???
Remember how I said it was cold here? Today it was one degree outside and yet when Megan asked me if I wanted to go ice-fishing I said, "OKAY!" So I ended up out in Troy's icehouse that he got for free off of Craigslist, manning his pole (ooer) and wishing I was dead after the propane for the heater ran out. It was awesome. I haven't gotten any pictures of ice-fishing yet, but I want to because there's something so traditional about it and beautiful in the most unexplainable way. The ice is a glowing blue through the dark water, the thickness apparent by the hole that the auger makes. Everybody brings their choice of alcohol, despite what time it is, and they're content sitting in a tiny house, hunched over these holes that they have to keep scooping ice out of because the water immediately freezes over. A lot of the crew here have grown up ice-fishing, using their parents' fishing poles and listening to their moms or dads tell them stories about how one time they caught a trout that was this big. Megan was worried that since I hadn't grown up ice-fishing, I might be bored and think that it was dumb. In fact, I stayed out for an hour (the longest I could take without the heater being on), staring down my fishing hole and occasionally jerking my minnow around in an attempt to attract a fish. I was pretty disappointed that I didn't get anything, but it is fun nonetheless. Even more fun than actual ice-fishing, I think, is actually BEING on the lake! Now that it's completely frozen over, it's intoxicating to run across the expanse of flatness, into the milky sun as it weakly shines through the cold. Leeann, JMack, and I all kicksledded on the lake (basically the dogsled without the dogs, so you kick to get it going, like a scooter) one afternoon while everyone else ice-fished, made snow-angels on the ice, penguin slid (I've ALWAYS wanted to penguin slide on a frozen lake! My abs were sore for days afterwards), and climbed trees inaccessible during times when the lake wasn't frozen over. I love frozen lakes.
Upon returning home from SLC, I immediately had to work Winter Family Escape, a family camp that occurs for three days leading up to New Year's Eve. It was REALLY FUN, especially since many of the attendants were returning families who all had little children who knew each other and ran in packs. These packs were our charges for the week and we did everything we could to entertain them in the snow.
We built quinzhees
We taught them how to kicksled
We built snow zoos with them
And the best part of all, which wasn't really our doing, was that a dog sled team came down to visit and brought all their beautiful puppies with them!
AHHHH SLED DOG KISSESSSS!!!
Blue eyes
I kept calling her Ghost, like from Game of Thrones, but her name was really White-Feather, which is AWESOME
hahaha I love this one because he's like, "please stop"
Puppy used TACKLE! It's SUPER EFFECTIVE!
I was in love with his floppy ears
Beautiful Mishka
Mishka (foreground) is the other dog's (background) grand-daughter. Her mother was chained on the other side of her
Perfect Circle
Snowflakes on their fur
I could not, would not stop cuddling with them all. My favorite was Mishka, the gorgeous arrow-faced one. She was shy at first, but then warmed up to me when I refused to stop stalking her and then we were bffs.
No really, we were. B. F. F. S.
Winter Family Escape was also fun because we got to set up luminaries for a night hike, which was amazing because it occurred during a full moon, and then we basically had a bonfire party in the teepee. At this point, I may or may not have dropped my phone into the fire. And got a video of me doing it COMPLETELY by coincidence (since I was filming how pretty the coals were and then I lost my grip on my phone). Also the next day I may or may not have dropped my phone in a snowdrift that then one of the kids retrieved for me while they were cross country skiing. I don't take my phone to work, now.
Also, I saw Common Redpolls! LIFE LIST!
Before Christmas, we visited the RAPTOR CENTER!!! It was amazing, because they are seriously the NUMBER ONE raptor hospital in the entire world!!! I didn't get to see the clinic, unfortunately (though Megan gave us the dirty deets later aka told us about how they coped our kestrels for us), but it was still amazing to see all of their birds and facilities. They have a legit, maze-like system of mews in the backyard of the building where a majority of their large birds live, as well as a room where they bring their small birds in to weather. A tiny boreal owl blinked lazily at us from his mew and when we noticed that his lightbulb was a strange, muted color, our tour-guide told us that it was imitating tundra lighting. Before the lightbulb had been put in, the boreal owl was ripping out all his feathers, but the bulb corrected his hormonal balance issues and now he was calm. Before we left we were able to talk to one of their employees about training. It was the best enrichment trip ever.
A very tired Barred Owl
Light-morph Red-Tailed Hawk. Also, ignore the white-washing, it's all part of the job
Peregrine Falcon
Bald Eagle
Turkey Vulture, which I think are very cool
You can see right through their nares, which I think is SO NEAT
I still have a couple more big winter adventures to talk about, but I think this blog post is pretty chock full of information and pictures as it is, so I'll leave it for next time. Hurray for accomplishing goals! I also made THREE charms last week, a male and female kestrel and a red-phase eastern screech owl (Gibbs for Leeann, Cica for me). Megan and I went to Duluth on Friday night to do some errands so I got some more charm essentials from Michael's and we went to OLIVE GARDEN which was awesome, so I'm ready to make TONS more charms! I have tomorrow off (three day weekend, YESSSS) so I'm going to spend it hopefully doing art and maybe getting my pictures developed from New Year's Eve. Happy Sunday, friends!
