White out!

Omigosh! I don't know what the exact definition of a blizzard is,but it looks like we're in one, right after a day where the grass was showing tufts of green and the temperature was near 50! Door County is always a treat! We're sort of snowed in, because the wind has blocked out even the lake, a short 300 yards from our patio window.

How did the Indians ever do it? I'm sitting at my computer in a safe, warm and dry house...and thinking about not only their teepees,...but of the brown and grey chinked log cabins built by hand and hard labor and that abound in Door County. You can't help but be reminded that settling here must have been a real trial. Why would they do it? Freedom from servitude and freedom for their Moravian religion is the obvious answer. But I think of the mothers, trying to keep the kids warm, making a home of a small cabin. I'm an only child. I cherish the times when I can be by myself. I have always wondered how the families dealt with the lack of privacy. There was nowhere in the cabin to be by oneself. And think of the noise. The wind wails around the corner of our condominium! What would it be like in a little cabin? I guess you accommodate to whatever life gives you. Hopefully these pioneers were able to take a breath and recognize the beauty of the place that they had chosen to make their home.

And after I think about these negative parts of a snow storm, I look out and see the absolutely stunningly beautiful white landscape, punctuated with exclamation points of birch trees along the shore of Kangaroo Lake. The cedars are bending their dark green branches with heavy white snow, waving in the winds. And the wind! It send snow perpendicular to the large meadow that leads to the lake.

And here we are. Jerry makes a fire. We read. We sit. We make some soup and enjoy the warmth as we watch winter invade our Door County. And we count our blessings.