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I promised myself I wasn't going to write about the weather again. I'm breaking that promise.

I made it because everybody talks about the weather all the time, especially when there's nothing else to discuss. It's the excuse to gripe or rejoice, the reason for prayer or castigation. It's the one thing that everyone knows something about, the pivotal point in many plans.

I've used our extreme weather as an excuse to brag to relatives and friends who live elsewhere; I've used it to create photos to share around the world. Weather has been the motive to get out and walk, or the excuse to stay in and read a good book.

It's also been the grist for many a newspaper column—too many, I sometimes think. And so I decided to stay away from the weather topic for a while.

I think Mother Nature heard that unspoken promise. She heard it and she said, "It's not NICE to ignore Mother Nature!" And she conjured up some overnight weather that made it impossible to keep that promise. Just like she intended

That morning, I awoke to the magical, wondrous, spirit-lifting sight of a world decorated in white flocking. I stood at the upstairs window and stared at what just the night before had been a dreary, winter-weary world, gray in the corners, dirty along the edges. Now, it lay in a silent white stillness, fragile in its beauty.

What I wanted to do was photograph it immediately. What I had to do was attend a meeting. But it didn't last long, and on the way home I detoured to the Lake Superior waterfront, that always-beckoning, always changing place. Thick snow muffled the tires of the van to add to the reverence of the expedition, almost like going to church.

I was a little chagrined, but not surprised, to discover cars already down there. What did surprise me was that they weren't fellow scenery worshipers. They were ice fishermen, who had abandoned their vehicles and taken to the frozen tundra known in other seasons as Agate Bay in Two Harbors. The air, filled with an unexplained and faint mist, dimmed the clarity of the morning so those anglers looked like figures caught up in the smoky halls of time, figures from fairy tales and childhood dreams. The proximity of the seven-story ore docks didn’t diminish that effect.

Two days before, huge ice floes had glided and jostled determinedly alongside the breakwater, heading toward the open water as if answering some unheard migratory call. This morning, even they had stilled. They lay in suspended animation upon the surface of water smooth and still as glass.

I aimed and snapped and aimed again, framing, focusing, seduced into a shutter clicking frenzy by scenes that were magnificent no matter where I looked. Everything was photogenic; every side was a good side. Even the absence of the sun meant that any angle worked.

A soft shuffle to my left made me turn, to be faced with another photographer, his big camera tucked inside an oversize jacket to keep it dry when not in use. We talked together in superlatives, but even those words were much too inadequate for what lay before us. He moved off to the walking trail, I stayed facing the bay.

A man in a truck called a soft greeting, afraid to break the spell. Two young men, barely more than teens, shuffled from out of somewhere, heading toward the breakwater. Beauty had undone them, had stripped away the usual blasé facade sometimes affected by the young. I heard their voices rising and falling in awe and delight as they blazed a trail through unmarked snow.

It didn't matter that it's March, that winter has been long and cold, that spring is stingier with her favors here than elsewhere in the country. It didn't matter that shoveling lay ahead for some, that driving would have to be more cautious, that the Minnesota shuffle would once again be employed by those afoot.

Winter had beguiled us all, had bestowed this parting gift in a week where spring makes her official debut and where we assure ourselves that winter's days are numbered. In an amazing slight-of-hand, winter succeeded in making us forget, for just a few hours, that we'd been longing for his departure.

So, winter wins one final round. He gets one more weather column. I couldn't help myself.

By Monica Isley - lablover47  

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