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.