Thinking about Winter

East Grand Traverse Bay - November 16, 2012

Another week has passed and the realization that next week is Thanksgiving has finally sunk in. The calendar says it is mid-November but one wouldn’t know it by looking out the window. The sun shines brightly and the ground is bare of snow. We have had a couple of days of snow, that heavy wet stuff that comes down hard and melts a day later.

This is not the November I remember as a child. Growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, winter came early and stayed late into April. The winters there were brutal; three hundred inches of snowfall were not uncommon.  Living close to my high school, I walked to class bundled up in layers of wool and heavy boots. Cancelling class for storms was an infrequent event; we were rugged Yoopers who weren’t afraid of a little snow.

I attended college at Michigan Tech, located across the canal from my home. I now participated in the risky world of winter driving, navigating my rear-wheel drive vehicle over snow-packed roads. The car slid and spun, weighted in the trunk with snow shovels, jumper cables and spare clothes. But winter didn’t prevent me from going to class or attending parties and dating. I was fearless.

After graduation I moved south, away from the long UP winters and to northwest Michigan where the snow came later and spring arrived in March. It was here that I experienced my first green Christmas, a warm overcast day where I walked along the snowless TART trail near my home. The town was quiet, devoid of skiers and snowmobilers who always came up for the holidays. Christmas without snow loses its magic.

Winter seems to arrive later and later each year. Gone are the days when I loathed getting up in the morning, knowing that I had to drive through another day of treacherous roads. Storms come infrequently now, but when they do come, they are nasty episodes, downing power lines, closing down roads.

Do I miss the old days? Personally I don’t, for I have never been a fan of winter. But I am concerned about the effects of our all too frequent mild winters. Driving past East Grand Traverse Bay this week, the water has receded back several hundred yards from the shore, exposing sand and rocks. I cannot remember the last winter in which the bay froze over. After a summer of no rain, we need winter’s snow to replenish and refresh the bays and forests. How much more stress can we placed on the natural world until it rebels back?

I saw the damage that Sandy did on the Atlantic shoreline, a combination of warmer waters, a large population base and an autumn tropical storm. Will that severe weather come to my community? Is there anything I or anyone else can do to reduce that chance? I don’t have the answers but we are all at risk. I don’t want to be on bad side of Mother Nature.