John Romano
9-21-11
English 305
Snow Falls, UP
Winter snowfall in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula makes the North Pole look
like a tropical getaway.
Some might even say the UP is indeed the North
Pole; the thick, gray clouds like omnipresent Santas, showering down their
snowflakey gifts upon the hesitantly waiting recipients of nature’s annual
holiday season.
The snow season is a ritual in these parts.
Nestled halfway between Lake Superior and even more Lake Superior, the
UP— the Keweenaw— is a snow magnet.
The weathermen call it “lake effect”
snow; the locals merely know it as winter.
When winter settles upon the UP
with its relentless onslaught of crystallized H2O, the people are waiting.
The mudroom of each house looks like the staging area for an Antarctic
expedition.
A family of four might have half a dozen snow shovels standing
at attention by the door; each sees use daily. Gloves, hats, boots, scarves,
and jackets spill from closets and overtake unprepared coat-hangars.
Melted
snow from the previous night’s adventures pools in puddles beneath footwear,
and leaves woolen hats a bit soggy.
encase them in outerwear.
Children hardly notice as their parents
After getting dressed each morning, it’s necessary
to dress once more before exiting the house.
These northerners are ultra-
experienced dressers.
Weather preparedness is instinctive to the UP’s habitants.
There is no
need for grown UP men to feign indifference to the weather; boots pulled
tight, colorless green jackets clinging to their shoulders, shamelessly
sporting their ubiquitous snowpants, winter becomes them.
It’s not uncommon
to see couples shopping at Econo-Foods in full winter attire, and no one
looks at a man all funny-like when he arrives at work with icicles suspended
from his mustache.
In fact, the more icicles the better; facial ice is an
antler-like status symbol.
The winters are brutal, no doubt, but the
survivors reap the rewards of living in America’s most underappreciated snow
preserve.
Beside the primary two-lane road, just north of Mohawk, stands the 35foot tall snow gauge—the most visible indicator of seasonal snowfall vitality
in the UP.
It’s white and red, like a vintage mercury thermometer, though it
only measures temperatures in terms of foot-deep coldness.
In the summer,
the snow gauge is but a novelty tourist stop; in the winter passersby can
stop to note an arrow gradually rising to mark accumulated yearly snowfall.
Two notable snowfall measurements are inscribed on the gauge: the 1931 low of
a mere 81.3 inches, and the notoriously impressive 1979 high of 390.4 inches.
Three hundred and ninety inches?
We’re going to need a bigger plow.
Anything less than a cumulative 200 inches of snow each winter leaves
the elderly locals grumbling about how easy today’s children have it.
When,
say, an Iowan child wakes up to a few inches of snow on the ground, it’s a
nearly guaranteed snow day; in the UP, a couple inches of snow means the kids
are probably showing up to class early.
in the UP get it done.
By ski, snowshoe, or sled, children
And it’s not just the younglings making the snow work for them;
teenagers in the UP have their own seasonal shoveling businesses.
No, it’s
nothing trivial like shoveling waist deep snow from driveways or sidewalks or
roads.
That tomfoolery is best left to the infants and pre-schoolers.
The business is shoveling roofs.
It’s a sound business plan, really,
as those roofs aren’t going to support several feet of snow for an entire
season.
The snow has to go, and who better to take care of it than society’s
most able-bodied and danger-seeking demographic?
Where a south-of-the-UP
dweller might throw a tantrum over a quarter-inch of snow on his car in the
morning, Keweenaw adolescents are climbing onto the roofs of houses to shovel
snow.
Climbing onto the roofs?
But no, it’s really not.
With a ladder?
That sounds dangerous!
Kids straddle up snow banks that have
enveloped houses in their entirety to reach the roof.
Shoveling quite
literally tons of snow off of neighborhood roofs is a safari compared to the
nature walk of a more teenage-typical lawn mowing career.
Then again, kids
in the UP are bred to be ready; they are born with a shovel in one hand and a
human skull in the other.
Their cribs frozen Rancor dens, young children are
released into the frigid wilderness at an early age in a Spartanesque
survival challenge; the brawnier headhunt snowmen while the weak might slink
off to a life of unfortunate misery in backwoods Wisconsin.
In an
environment where only the strong children will survive, they all survive.
While the adolescents have their own snow stories unfolding each
winter, Keweenaw adults are also embattled in an ongoing struggle against the
elements.
Snow removal in the UP isn’t just another chore; it’s not an
uncomfortable aside to everyday life.
society’s activities.
The snow is a functional menace to
Even the Ford trucks manufactured in the lesser, or
perhaps just “lower,” half of the state can’t overcome a hearty night’s worth
of snow with their seasonally insufficient 35-inch tires.
In winter, city sidewalks become temporary storage lanes for plowed
snow, though shop owners cunningly push it back into the streets once the
plow has departed.
The plow will return again, after all, because even
scores of rugged men and their machines can’t defeat nature in a single,
muscular pass.
The burly adults who thrust themselves upon each morning’s snowfall do
so with the vigor of a thousand lions.
Teeth bared, county snow removers set
forth into the relative wilderness armed with nothing but plows, shovels, and
a destructive hatred of snow.
Once they finish with the roads, their
attention turns to the lesser transportation vessels.
With shovels drawn, the snow patrol will advance menacingly towards the
buried entrance of Backroom Books, carving a tunnel of concentrated anger
through the encroaching snow.
When they are through here, customers will
again be able to browse the area’s largest selection of used books and other
antiquated media.
Tomorrow, they will do it all again.
In snow-encrusted yards, free range chipmunks hoard the seedy refuse of
Chickadees scattered beneath their charity perches—the bird feeders.
After
their scavenger hunts are complete, the chipmunks dash back into their snow
tunnels, cheeks bulging, to deposit their gathered treasures.
In spring,
sunflowers will sprout from long-forgotten seed hovels hidden beneath
strategically selected rocks and logs.
These flowers, as well as garage-
bound snowplows, are the only hints remaining of the natural insanity of UP
winters, when its other season, not-winter, warms the earth.