Winter in Michigan

Chester Emerson

Due to the technology of Facebook, I was recently able to re-connect with an old friend from high school days. (Yes, the term in this case refers not only to the length of time we’ve known each other, but to our respective ages as well, considering our high school days occurred circa 1969.)

Once I discovered Chester is a good writer — he blogs at Chetemerson01’s Weblog — I thought my readers in AZ would enjoy his observations on Michigan winters. — Ed.

by Chester Emerson

I have been asked by Trudy to write something about winter in Michigan. A season that is both reviled and celebrated by those who live here. It’s not a mild season here, but it’s also not particularly brutal either. Of course, it all depends on where you live in Michigan.

For example, here in the Detroit area where Trudy and I hail from, winter isn’t always snowy and cold. There have been times, in seasons past, that have been unseasonably warm. I recall one Christmas Eve working on a construction site in a t-shirt. At the same time, the lakeshore along Lake Michigan is getting pounded with lake effect snow and temperatures below freezing.

Sometimes winter comes early and stays late as it did during the ’08-’09 season. During the period of mid-November until after the 1st of the year we were beat up by one weather system after another, dumping feet of snow. With way below average temperatures.

On the other hand, the Western side of the Lower Peninsula, with Lake Michigan lapping at its shores gets, as I mentioned earlier, lake effect snow. A lot of it. I remember one year taking my wife and dog up to our vacation property between the cities of Cadillac and Manistee the first week of May. Where the sun was not obstructed, there was very little snow. However, when we tried to walk among the tall evergreens, where there is heavy shade, the snow was so deep it was difficult to wade through it.  So much so, I had to pick up my dog, who was a Doberman mix, long legged, weighing in at 45 pounds, and carry her out.

But the snowfall champ here is the Upper Peninsula.  Getting lake effect snows from Lake Michigan to the south and Lake Superior to the North.  The Keweenaw Peninsula getting crowned with snows of 200 + inches on average. For example, in the ’08-’09 season, the Keweenaw got 217 inches of snow. Which is nothing compared to the 1978-1979 season when 355.90 inches of the stuff got dumped on them.  That’s just slightly more than 29 and two thirds feet of snow. It is considered to be the snowiest place east of the Mississippi river.

So writing about this season is at once daunting and easy.  There is so much that can be said. For some it is an irritation, to be endured.  To others it’s a time of  rest and preparation for spring. There are those that welcome it as a time of beauty. As things become hidden beneath a blanket of snow and the boughs, limbs and branches of the trees hang heavy with the freshly fallen stuff.

Then there are the ones that see it as a time to play. And play they do. Ice skating, skiing, sledding, tobogganing. snowmobiling. If you see a hill, you’ll see children sledding down it. A frozen lake, dozens of Ice Shanties with people fishing in a hole augured into the ice. In fact, there is a festival devoted to Ice Fishing up in Houghton Lake every year. Much jovial drinking and shenanigans are done there during that time. It’s a wonder any fishing gets done. A year doesn’t go by where you don’t hear of some person losing a snowmobile, a car or a pickup truck through the ice.

Ice sculpting is another favorite pastime and there are at least 3 festivals here devoted to it. The one in Plymouth is the oldest and, in my opinion, the best. But sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate. This year’s had temps in the forties. Not what you want for a festival featuring ice sculptures. Then, as if playing a cruel joke, the day after the festival ended, the temps dropped below freezing again. Such is life here.

As a boy, in the late 50′s early 60′s, my family lived in rural places. We had a home on Wolverine Lake. Much time was spent during the winter exploring the reeds and cattails along the frozen shoreline. Ice skating was also a fun thing to do.

Later, we moved to Walled Lake. Even though we were within walking distance of the lake, the attention of my brother Roger and I was drawn to the cattail swamp that was right out our back door. During the summer, he and I really weren’t  much interested in it. But, when winter arrived, it became our playground. Our folks didn’t mind, they were happy to have us outside despite the cold. Wandering through the maze of cattails, we became intimately familiar with our environment. There wasn’t much that we didn’t know about the place. Every muskrat lodge was noted, each tree stump and dead fall examined. So when a trapper started setting traps for the muskrats it didn’t escape our notice.

My brother and I had never seen such a contraption as a muskrat trap before. I was ten and Roger was eighteen months younger than me. With its open jaws, it was nailed to a board, baited with an apple and submerged through a hole in the ice. Poking it with a stick, the jaws snapped shut, cutting the stick short. So we developed a healthy respect for it. Upon further exploration, we discovered more such setups. As young boys with heads filled with fanciful notions we considered the muskrats our friends. So it was decided that we had to protect our charges from these evil things. We set out and tripped  each of the traps with a stick and pulled them out of the icy water.

After collecting all that we could find we took them home and put them in the garage, happy with the thought that we had saved our friends. Our parents were unaware of what we had done. So I imagine that it was quite a shock to my mother when a very angry man came beating on our door a few days later demanding the return of his property. My mother said she didn’t know what he was talking about. Amid threats of calling the police, he walked over to the garage, pulled the traps out and asked her if she knew nothing about this. It was at this point that she turned to us and gave us the look.

There isn’t a person alive that has a Mother that doesn’t know what the look is. It has the ability to blister paint, and melt steel. Young children have no defense for the look, they just become reduced down to a puddle of goo with no muscular control other than speech and that’s marginal at best. When asked who was responsible we stammered our admission of guilt. Our mother assured the trapper that she would take care of disciplining us. Satisfied, he picked up his property and turned to leave. I don’t know what spurred me to blurt out, but I asked him how he knew where we had taken his traps.

He stopped, looked at me and said, “I followed your tracks in the snow”.

Lesson learned.

Winter on Lake Michigan - photo by Marco Bonavoglia