I was reading my New York Times today and came across this little article. It made me think of home. I was going to include the link, but you need a password to get in. So I just copied and pasted despite the size...

A Long Wait for Winter
By KATHERINE LANPHER



ST. PAUL
Our first real snowfall of the season was a beaut — big, fat, lazy flakes that piled up through the day, nearly six inches in the cities, twice that up north. The only problem: It was just last week.

Usually, a February snowfall is part of the normal tedium of winter here. You've become used to snow by then, its grace and its burden. You love its unbesmirched whiteness covering the laziness of autumn, when you meant to rake the leaves, really. You endure the snow that has been driven on and trod upon, gray and slushy and joyless.

So that first snow found us all a bit loopy with the prize of it, the way prairie settlers must have greeted a long-sought-for rain in August. Children played in their yards in snow suits so new they practically squeaked, and strolling down any street you could catch the fine points of a discussion on how to build a snow fort. Men driving trucks with snow plows revved their engines and vroomed down city streets just to show they could; lesser mortals in sedans fishtailed at intersections.

It's all part of the endearing waltz of winter here, but this year we've been a beat or two off. In January, a string of warm days found us not only snowless but with temperatures in the 50's. People came undone; one day a young man passed me on his bicycle. He was wearing a linen jacket.

January used to mean stiff winds and snow drifts, sliding parties and toddlers in so many layers that you want to poke them to see if they hit the ground and bounce back up. Waiting until February for our first snow was not only unnatural but also unnerving. I'm a tender transplant to Minnesota, having been here only two decades, but I remember when I succumbed to the awful majesty of winter, when the tow truck required to move your car two feet to the garage seemed charming and shoveling was reclassified as aerobic exercise. I was sitting with friends in a six-holer shack on the great lake of Mille Lacs, waiting for the depth-finder to show us some fish. I excused myself to step outside.

I was caught by the night sky, a dark wrap on the horizon, and by the vision of a slumbering village of ice-fishing shacks as far as the eye could see. Occasionally the ice groaned, but you could stamp your feet on that temporary terra firma and feel grounded in the embrace of Old Man Winter. You breathed out and your breath stayed on the air like a small white cloud. I fell in love.

The affair continued. It got serious when I picked up a pair of cross-country skis and found myself moving parallel to the Mississippi River, the open parts of the water looking like polished pewter.

So I'm a woman in love and my suitor, Old Man Winter, is turning fickle, waving at me with a few flurries and then leaving and now showing up again at the last minute. I'd slam the door on him, but . . . maybe he didn't mean it. Maybe he'll stick around this time, at least long enough for a turn by the river.


Katherine Lanpher is host of "Midmorning" on Minnesota Public Radio