Winter, astronomical winter that is, arrived on December 22, 2011 at around 12:30 AM CST. Fast-forward a week, and we do have a tiny amount of snow and the ambient air temperature is often below +32 degrees F (0 C), but it honestly does not feel like winter. There are things such as snowshoeing, snowmobiling and ice fishing which northern minnesotans usually partake in during the winter that hasn't been possible thus far. For the Jokela household we do not snowmobiling (fumes & noise) or much ice fishing (not enough time and equipment) but we are fans of snowshoeing. Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks we will get enough snow to be able to enjoy this season called winter. The snowshoes, skijouring harness and dog booties are all ready to be used. The new dog-hauler is ready to rolls, as well.
Even with a tiny bit of snow here in Proctor, it feels more like late fall than actual winter. On Christmas day, however, headed up the shore of Lake Superior to Judge C. R. Magney State Park (see Devil's Kettle - Snowshoeing the North Shore for my last visit to this gem of Northern Minnesota). Along the way to the park, we made our traditional Christmas day stop in Grand Marais, MN. We had the hounds in tow with us this year as we now have a swanky hound-mobile with room for all four dogs. Windy and colder than at our southern end of the North Shore, but gorgeous none-the-less.
Right next to viewing the Devil's Kettle in Judge C. R. Magney Park, as far as my favorite sights of the North Shore, is being able to look down (south) from Grand Marais and see the Sawtooth Mountains cut across the horizon. It is particularly spectacular as sundown is nearing.
Even with the great sights of Grand Marais and the strangeness of being in a town on Christmas day that appears to be completely empty and the only things working are the one or two stop lights; the whole region - from Proctor in the south to Grand Marais in the north, does not feel like winter. Maybe by Valentine's Day we will winter, maybe?
I have been mulling this over for the last couple of weeks. Trying to figure out heads and tails of concept, feeling or just inkling of how dogs (hounds, in my case) enter your life and then exit.
If you have a dog live to be twelve, and you end up living to be eighty, that dog will have been in your presence about 16% of your time on this earth. That leaves 84% of the time that the canine was not part of your life. Yet, if you are a dog lover, and those who know me know that am I, you will have multiple hounds pass through your life. They all have personalities, some were hot headed and some were gentle souls who had gotten the short end of the stick for part of the life before wandering into mine.
Hounds have phantasmal qualities, as well. They can communicate with you, but at the same time, the communication is not straight-forward and simple, it is often as cryptic as a ghost's writing on a fogged up bathroom mirror. We often mentally claw at and grapple with what is going on in their heads. Are they in pain? Do they need something?
Often, as soon as we think we understand them, just that little bit, they pass through our lives. We are forced to grapple with the void they leave and the questions that may remain unanswered about them. But, we move on, and soon, another hound has begun their own passing through.
