It was approaching the middle of January and several of us, behind a warm window, watched several of them heft coughing snowmobiles so they were pointing toward a distant snow bank, and then race across the patch of grass. A small struggle on a weekend in the farthest reaches of Michigan, a place where grass in January is as common as....grass in January.
January is a dark month. The mornings can be a struggle against the dark, disbelieving the clock as daylight pushes against 8 a.m., almost as if the day itself was having the same push against the stubborn dark that we are having.
We who stick it out here have January habits. We get out in the snow. We know how to drive around in it, and "plan the drive accordingly". We have Friday night basketball games and hockey practice, and skiing. Kids find any handy slant to ride down, on anything handy. Skiers get out to shake off the day or the week.
But it's been the snowmobilers who have suffered the most from this odd January. They have filled parking lots with trailers and glistening sleds, and with all the good faith and hopes they could carry. They could have traveled whole days to be here.
"Always snow up there". "They get a couple of hundred inches every year". "If they don't have it today, they'll have it tomorrow."
On the ridges and in the back country the snow held up well enough to make a run of it. But anywhere near civilization was ice at best, and cement as usual. Whole groups tried to a make a go of it those first weeks of January. They gathered and passed along "intel" about snowier spots, and runs that could be made, if it didn't get any warmer.
It was hard to watch. Harder still to think about the dozens of businesses that gear up for January, that hire and buy and wait for the trailers, and the whine and riders.
What happened this January? Is this what we're supposed to expect?
I noticed that there were warmer days in the '30s, and again the '50s. That made me think of people who lived here long before us, who would have appreciated these weeks of warmth, and of ease in moving around. They may have been thankful to have such easy hunting this late, and to have winter shortened by those important few weeks. If winter were still the great killer that it had been for so long, and no longer is, then this January would have been a true blessing.
The snow is coming. Much more snow.
Pat Egan is the former publisher of the Sault Evening News. He is a recipient of the William Allen White award for editorial writing. He and his wife, Debra, live at Salt Point.
