Snow drifts over cars blurring the ability to move in any direction. Wind slices, the cut of a sword across daylight, bare skin, frozen smiles, Minnesota winter welcomes the unwelcomed and embraces them in a frozen hug. Cold toes in wet shoes looking for frosty mugs of warm liquids. Something to unthaw from the inside: hot chocolate, coffee, steaming tea, mocha, latte, anything with melting flavors. You get the idea.
I step into the wind and smile. Today will be a good day with nowhere to go, nothing needing to be done. @Kommienezuspadt & I get into his new Model Y Tesla with a Northern direction for our destination. Fleeing the commotion and buzzing of a city beneath the beginning of a blizzard. Last minute shoppers shuffling slush filled parking lots. Horns honk. Our late start puts us in a madness of taillights and slow moving slick white highway. Tires attempt to grip as everyone tries to flee in one direction at the same time, hurrying to get nowhere.
A white Ford pickup, you know, the a$$holes with the complex, it maneuvers itself out of a ditch at sixty five miles per hour in the deep snow after dodging an imminent collision during an abrupt stop. Red paired lights glow back as eyes from a line of mad machines. We all hate being here, in this traffic and weather. Windshield wipers frantic to keep vision with the hopes to emerge on the other side of a new blanketed landscapes. To witness the pristine morning after the storm we must first survive the furry, the cold, and the unforgivable. Minnesota at its darkest hour, sunsets after Christmas week. When all the merry has been used up.
One hundred and fifty miles into the future and a pit stop in quaint Hinkley: a warm family diner turned gift shop. “Uffta” coffee mugs, and Minnesota warm wearable gear: maroon sweaters, red, black, and gray flannel plaid winter hats. The type that have those optional flaps to cover frosted ears with fake fur. New norms and changes from post pandemic lifestyle-livelihoods where booths that once held rosy cheeked visitors warming themselves over a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup now sit display cases of tourist items: travel stickers, locally produced jars of honey, loaves of homemade bread, Grandpa's maple syrup, wool socks. The display case of day old glazed pastries screams delicious temptation to my new post-holiday diet. I'm still trying to lose those pandemic pounds I put on.
Back on the night road, Highways 35E North bound dodging long angry semis spewing up snow dust and wind drifts causing white outs on windshields. The car sways between dotted buried lines. @Kommienezuspadt grips the wheel is deadlock concentration. Snowplows blink lights of hope, red, yellow, white. Road guardians: the saviors clearing safe passage for travelers. A pride in battling the elements. A honor in fighting the Minnesota winters and not being defeated by the harshest of conditions. This is in the blood of Minnesotans- stubbornness to conquer in the face of all possible winter odds.
Snow flakes turn to sleet. Sunset leads to a dark empty horizon ahead. Headlights in white zooming flakes like traveling at light-speed. A destination to rest appeals to the heart of the weary. One more hour and then another, turn the radio louder, block out the weather. Look to the future. Hope for our arrival.
To be continued…
By Charles Denton
