Migration

In Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general, there are many, many lakes. In Minneapolis alone I can think of nine lakes, but there probably are more hidden somewhere that I've never heard of or never visited. Let me see if I can name them: Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet, Cedar Lake, Lake of the Isles, Lake Nokomis, Lake Hiawatha...I guess I can't. So be it. Maybe there were only six? Occasionally I tell people about growing up in Minnesota and all of the amazing things that happen there, including the Winters that are ever so cold. I remember how during the Winter we would often spend time outdoors, regardless of the temperature outside, sledding, skating, and of course building gigantic caves out of the mountains of snow that we would create when we would shovel the driveway. A snowstorm would come through and blanket the entire city in sometimes two, three, and up to four feet of snow. I'm not exaggerating. My big Brother and I would be sent out to the garage to brandish our weapons for snow elimination -- the shovel. We would shovel, and shovel, and shovel, and then shovel some more, all while the clear areas were being attacked with a new, fresh blanket. The snow was relentless, and our job never seemed to end.

The snow would eventually let up and the driveway would be clear enough for the family Pinto to pass through. Usually it didn't matter how much snow descended upon the city. Work and life had to continue, and the Pinto had duties to fulfill in the morning. My Brother, in typical older Brother fashion, would pelt me with a few snowballs and probably dump me in the snow a few times; torture being his forte. The battle would end and then he would suggest that we build a snow fort out of the banks of snow that were piled high on the sides of the driveway. Sometimes these banks would tower many feet up in the air, and what was once a tedious job became the perfect medium for a cave. We would start digging into the snow banks to produce a hole large enough for a kid to pass through, and then we would dig some more. We eventually would have a cave-like structure large enough for not only one person, but sometimes up to four people to sit comfortably. Sometimes the Olsons or the Ekstroms would come over to share our fort, but sometimes it was just me and my big brother. It was our own little igloo to protect us from the elements and to hide from the real world.

Many hours were also spent traversing the lakes of the city and state. No, we didn't swim across the lakes during the Winter, but rather we walked across the lakes. The weather remained so cold for so long that the water would freeze, and sometimes up to a few feet deep. Not so much in the city, but elsewhere in the state, people would often drive their vehicles onto the lake, usually with the sole purpose of placing a structure on the lake so they could then drill holes in the ice and commence the activity of ice fishing. For some reason, (and I've never even really understood this one) people in Minnesota love to go out to the middle of the lakes, sit in their little ice house, drink many, many beers and wait for fish to attack the bait that they present through a little hole in the ice. To each their own, I suppose. For me and my Brother, the lakes offered a different Winter-time activity! Ice skating! An area would be cleared of snow on the ice (once again requiring a shovel), and we would skate, and skate, and skate, for hours at a time. Backwards, forwards, jumping, figure-eights - I loved it all. I even took figure skating lessons at one time, all the while, donning my Dorothy Hamill styled hair. It was the seventies, after-all.

There was one lake in Minnesota that never froze over, and as a matter of fact, it remained fluid throughout the year. Silver Lake was in Rochester, Minnesota where my Mother grew up, and where we usually ended up to celebrate all of our holidays with my Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. We would go to the house where my Mother was actually born to give thanks, deck the halls, or search for the elusive tinted egg. If our visit was during the Fall or Winter, we usually would take a drive over to Silver Lake to see, not only dozens, but literally hundreds of Canadian geese, with a smattering of ducks in-between. Geese would be everywhere in this lake, but only for a short while. They were still preparing to form their typical "V" formation, and to migrate to warmer climates - or at least that's what I think their objective was. When the geese decided that it was time to go, what would be their final destination? That was always my question. How could these geese be enjoying a lovely, warm bath one minute, and then just fly away to a destination unknown. Or perhaps they did know their destination? A conundrum, I suppose.