Mountains of Snow

Last night, we sat together at The Roadhouse Night Club, two miles east of I-Falls, on Christmas. “Why would anyone cook for Christmas at home,” said a speaker of consensus, a jovial man who stopped by our table to bring holiday greeting. The dinner was free to everyone, and we could drop a donation to charity in the box if we so desired. The food was donated by Super-One Foods and the nightclub did the cooking. So many people came out in the snowstorm that parking became precarious.

I sat with two athletic women—a triathlon competitor and a searcher for ancient petroglyphs. When I mentioned the bike travels, they wanted details, nuts and bolts. We agreed to do some Nordic skiing together before I leave.

It snowed all night, and in the morning I had to sweep away snow just to get across the deck and down the steps. It was the first morning that I really saw a need for snow removal. Once outside, I climbed over a four-foot-high ridge of snow that the plow left along the road. Nobody will get in or out of here by car until somebody removes this snow. I walked to Sandy’s, trudging in knee-deep new snow, around piles of pushed-up snow, and along a narrow walking strip between the cleared driving lane on the road and the bank of snow that the plow left. Nobody was in Sandy’s except me and Katrina. She got stuck driving, but somebody gave her a push, and she made it. “All the streets in town are impassable except a few plowed ones,” she said, “and for those you have to shovel your driveway.”

The snowshoes were not much help as I left to see this for myself. I sank all the way down to solid old snow, just as I did in boots. And since they are harder to pull out of the snow than boots, I decided they need to wait for stiffer snow. I set out along a plowed road to see a snowstorm, as heavy snow continued to fall, Jack frost nipping at my nose.





I decided not to skate on the ice rink today.









Limber ladies, intertwined
bend their boughs and share the load
this too will slide away









Stronger
able against the wind
because we have each other









Seventeenth Street is the southern leg of a triangle that encloses most of International Falls. It’s two miles across, and today I think it was easier walking than driving.








The city plows snow from the road to the side, while the businesses move snow from parking lots to the road. Where the two movings meet, a mountain of snow rises that will surely remain until spring. It sounds competitive, but is not. I hear them talking and arranging piles. It’s a community effort.










Some people like to do their snow blowing in comfort.










Looking along Third Street, the main street of town—on the left is how it looks today. On the right is how it looked yesterday. I cannot walk the sidewalk today as I could yesterday. The plows have made the street passable but hardly parkable, and if you are walking, it has to be done where the cars go.