Snow? Not here. At least not today. This is a relatively typical winter on the Planet Ann Arbor here in the Great Lake State. It is cold but we are not getting a whole lot of snow. We are in the southeast part of the state and are therefore not subject to that loverly phenomenon known as Lake Effect Snow. The western side of the state gets a lot more snow than we do because they are right in the line of fire of the snowmaking machine known as Lake Michigan. Da Yoop and the Northern Lower? Lakes everywhere, large and small. Snow? Yes, usually. Us? Not so much. We do get big dumps of snow sometimes if a well-organized storm heads our way but Lake Effect Snow usually peters out long before it gets over here.

The beach urchins in the photooo are illustrating the results of a Lake Effect Snowstorm (or ten or twenty) on Fin Family Moominbeach (aka Lake Superior). I was searching my old film albums for a photo of Mouse at about five wearing a sundress on our front porch in front of a big outdoor thermometer that showed the temperature as being around zero. Fahrenheit, that is. Never could get that kid to wear warm clothing. She’s a nuclear reactor. But whenever I am looking for a specific photo I can NEVER find it and I couldn’t find that one. Among others, I found this one. I had labeled it “winter 1992” when I originally put it in the album. That would make Mouse (on the snowbank) almost five and Lizard Breath (in front) seven. You can see the Old Cabin peeking out from behind the snowbank.

We were able to get to the cabin on Fin Family Moominbeach for that winter picture largely because we could drive in on the one-lane gravel road to our beach and park at Radical Betty’s house a couple doors down. When I was a kid, that wasn’t possible because nobody lived out there year-round. In those early days, we had to park in front of Lewie’s house up on the county road. From there, there was no way to get down to the beach cabins besides skis or snowshoes. If you had little kids and you wanted to take them out there for your Sunday dinner (which we actually had at noon back in those days), you had to pull them behind you on a sled or toboggan or something. We did that twice after we first built our little cabin on the moominbeach. I was in first grade and The Engineer was three and I remember that the first time was really fun. Our parents pulled us and the groceries (I’m guessing because I don’t have full memories, maybe The Commander can help with this) down the road to the cabin. They built a fire in the old wood stove and I think we had a chicken dinner. I’m sure it was cooked before we got there and heated up somehow on top of the wood stove but I do not remember. This experiment was repeated a second time and all I remember about that was that I was freezing the whole time and probably both The Engineer and I cried. He probably cried because I cried.

You all out in the East, take care. Hope you have plenty of firewood and whine stashed up.

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