Rhythms

I’ve been very fortunate to watch winter storms in the snow belt for the past 47 years.

This one is a classic.

Some old-timer told me way back, ‘Yeah, the snow we get with a south wind is one thing. Once the wind turns out of the north, we’ll see what kind of muscle this storm has’. His words were sourced from years of dealing with some pretty powerful storms.

Today’s storm has had it’s classical rhythms. We woke up this morning with dense, fine grained snow falling with a south wind. Nice. We needed that kind of snow. Then, at about 10:30, the wind quietly switched and came at us out of the north. Now we’ll see what this storm has in store for us.

As the sun went down and the towns started plowing, we got out to deal with the snow we’ve gotten so far. It’s absolutely awesome. Dense, good moisture, grained to produce our signature track setting. We’ll go out tonight and pack down the stem lanes and get ahead of what’s to come.

Don’t be afraid to go out this weekend; I know it will be cold; but here’s a secret: everyone thinks foresters are super intrepid because we’d go out and run lines or mark timber when it was -10º. The secret is that once you get into the woods, the windchill becomes negligible; it doesn’t exist. Keep moving at a moderate pace and make sure you have a place to get into once you are done moving. You will be amazingly warm the whole time. Just wear some mittens instead of gloves. Pull on a heavier hat on, maybe a face mask (I’ll bet you loose that thing soon, though) and keep moving.

Hopefully I’ll see you out there. -CZ