BiblioGrind
On the Rim of a Millstone
Archive for December, 2007
December 29, 2007 at 11:15 am · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
Okay, NW Illinois is not completely remote, but on wintry days with blinding snowfall, ten inches of wet flakes, remnants of previous ice storms covering roads, and shit tires, there’s little else left to the imagination. Getting Mom and Dad to ACL yesterday from Chicago was an adventure that turned uber-adventure when we dipped into the Little Apple River valley and nearly could not get out.
The first run at a steep rise ended in a 180-degree spin back down. Fun!! Bring the kids!! The second run was spinning tires, the smell of rubber, and a slip-slide shunter up the road. Five more hills like that and we stood at the top of the driveway. There was no way to get the car back up if we ventured down. Better to open a bottle of wine and eat cheese and bread & butter.
The best method to bring down luggage from car to house is by sled. Now we are living the Siberian lifestyle!
Later, some human-cargo sledding had to be tried just to make us feel like kids again. (pics soon!). There’s nothing quite like snow covering you from toe to head that screams “FUN!” And then there are the Snow Satans carved into the powdery blanket outside the windows.
Here’s Marv testing out his new boots and skinny skis … making headway down to the frozen lake where he can make tracks for the days ahead.
December 20, 2007 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
Shakespeare said it best, I think: To ski, or not to ski.
This is the question.
If you’ve never skied Iowa, you’ve never quite experienced skiing at its most basic. Listen, any skier gets used to pulling into a resort parking lot and looking up at the mountain, where white rivers of frozen water crystals mark the routes they ache to get at, where chair lifts packed with eager skiers zip ski-ward. At Sundown Mountain, you also enter the parking lot and see the chairlifts, but what you’re seeing is the top of the “mountain.” You could easily be pulling into the lot of your local drugstore. No matter, you think, This is the place to be!
You want to hit the steep stuff. Sundown has this. As you edge over the drop-in, you wonder just what this run will look like. Looking down the Hoover Dam? Well, not quite. Yet for six exhilarating turns, you may just as well be nailing an Olympic downhill run. Then of course the hill flattens out like the chest of a ten year old boy.
Sundown Mountain is not the mountain I learned to ski on, but it is a ski palace of a sort. When you can’t get out to the Rockies, and Chamonix, France, is a fresh, nagging, aching, raw memory filled with bliss, comraderie, near death experinces, red wine, meat cooked on hot stones, and lots of black humor re tripping avalanches, this little piece of Iowa means that skiing goes on.
I ski, therefore I am.
My new ski buddy for the Apple Canyon winter: John Mandala
December 15, 2007 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
I’m looking for ice skates in the garage, but so far without success. The lake is mightily frozen. I saw ice-fishing tents out far in the middle. I don’t want to go ice fishing. I want to take a shovel down to the lake and clear off a space the size of a hockey rink, put on some skates, and go round in circles. Should I go left-to-right, or right-to-left? If I can’t find a hockey stick, what should use in its place? If I can’t find a puck, what would serve just as well?
People have asked me if I’m lonely living out here in winter, “with nothing to do.” I’ve got plenty to do, actually. I also have myself. That’s pretty damned good, most of the time.
I was reading a novel, where an English gentleman was unnerved by Americans because they did things unabashedly, without so much inner thought about what others might think. This English guy found this sort of thinking was opposite to the British, who are self-conscious about themselves, and about how they look to others. I must ask my English/British friends then: are you comfortable with yourself? able to feel good in your own skin? This won’t be a scientific study, but a half-asses survey with likely few responses. I have my own thoughts on this, of course … based on observation.
Whatever answers I get, I think this “feel free in your skin” question is more about personality than cultural norms (or abnorms); more likely a generational thing, too. I have friends across the country who, when they talk about their friends, point out a select few who cannot stand being alone. They need people around, and they need to be talking. Imagine, not wanting to be with yourself, sitting in silence, communing with your own thoughts.
That’s fucked up.
December 12, 2007 at 8:17 pm · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
Sunrise came below a blue sky. This contrasted with the last few days, where a white gloaming had settled across n.w. illinois, visibility halted below half a mile. But this sun, and the sky, illuminated all that was ice covered. And this was everything outside my window.
There was no way, no reason, for me to leave the house today. I wrote from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a little break for a workout. Why, I asked myself, would I need to walk up the driveway? I have ice skates.
December 11, 2007 at 1:50 pm · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
In a passion from the Winter Gods before the season officially hits, I sit amid an ice storm. Freezing rain has set a hockey ring across the roads, and now it is snowing. Very pretty, and I’m glad I don’t have to travel. Skiing has been on my mind, though, as I hear from friends in Chamonix, where atop Grand Montets there sits two meters of powder. I wanted to ski tomorrow at Chestnut Mountain, but I somehow doubt I will be able to even walk up my drive to where the car is parked safely on flat ground.
So the table-desk is where I’ll be, tapping out wit, sorrow, sex, and I hope some beautiful sentences. If nothing else, there’s liquor in the cabinet and dry wood on the hearth.
December 6, 2007 at 5:24 pm · Filed under Apple Canyon Winter '08
Back in the day, say 30 years ago, winter snows began just after Thanksgiving across Apple Canyon Lake. The ’80s and ’90s sort of warmed up (who knew?) and made Nov. and Dec. gray, muddy months. Cold, yes, but sickly cold: 39 degrees with slashing rain.
All that’s changed this year. Over last weekend, Dec. 1st to be accurate, a snow-sleet storm raged through the upper midwest, and Apple Canyon got its first whitening of the winter season. Tuesday, five more inches of the fluffy crystals fell, and tonight another light storm is bringing a further three inches by morning. This is Apple Canyon Lake as I always remembered it to be.
Those days, we grandkids would come out for one most important activity: sledding. The hills are pitched just so, where you can get up to mach speeds (by a kid’s count, don’t you know). Even the deep stuff won’t hold you back out here, and will just as good send snowy veils spraying front, left and right as you barrel-ass toward a tree. Can’t get any more fun than that out of life (until you’re old enough to meet girls, of course).
I wanted solitude; I wanted a quiet place to write and work. Apple Canyon is that place. They weekdays are quiet; so quiet now with the snow that the sounds of deer picking through the brush for berries is about all I can hear, along with the occasional flutter of wings from the red-tailed hawk couple that have taken up nest a hundred yards below the deck.
I’m not sure if there are more than 10 people per square mile out here at wintertime. That’s plenty of civilization, I think. If I want more, Scales Mound is 15 minutes down the road, and Pop-a-Tops serves the best damned Thumb Burger this side of the Mississippi. And did someone whisper “Ski” just now? The hell with the Alps. The Mississippi River bluffs call me on the winds.
