The Birkebeiner that wasn’t

In the old days there were Friday Night Fights. Grainy TV and two boxers in the ring; a square of canvas reality bound by rope as if the intent was to confine within the boundaries the energy and mayhem of those inside. Two boxers; a fixed arena; slugging it out.
At times one fighter would be hopelessly overmatched, struggling against all odds, against all hope, against what seemed the cruelty of the world beyond the ring.

You’d always root for him. We love to pull for the underdog, for the certain-to-be-loser, hoping against hope that in the waning minutes of the final round, down but not quite out, against the ropes and seemingly without hope, the underdog would reach back and unload the haymaker of the right hand and connect hard and in the end raise his hands in triumph. Against all odds.

It rarely happened. What are the odds? What odds that the overmatched pugilist, pummeled time and time again, would rise up in victory? Slim and none. That was the chance: Slim and none. Not unlike a team in the Super Bowl being down a couple dozen points at halftime and coming back to win. Really, what are the odds?

That was the story last week at the American Birkebeiner. A week of thawing weather hit like the heavy-handed punches of a boxer and put the race on the ropes. A day of 60 degrees; a hard shot to the body. Another 60 degree day; a right hook to the jaw. A warm day, again; a body blow like a boxer taking a hard hit, staggering back on his heels. The Birkie took on a personality, an organic being not just an event. You felt bad for it in the way you would for a person.

The weather pummeled the Birkie. Temperatures above average and not by a little. Early week and a breaking news report; the lake over which the last kilometers of the race ran, Lake Hayward, was opening up near town. The race director, via Facebook video, summed it up: “We can get you on the lake; we can’t get you off.”
Wham! A hard shot to the head of the Birkie. Now the race would not finish downtown in Hayward, that glorious three-block stretch of Main Street, covered with trucked-in snow and lined with throngs of cheering spectators. That would not happen. The race would be shortened.

The skiers watched it unfold. Watched the weather come in big and dark like an overweight puncher, seemingly all fat and flab but no, with a mean streak cut into its soul with a jagged knife and the ability to hit hard. The race stood like the patsy and took another blow.

The big haymaker came on Monday night when hard rains moved in, near an inch and a half. The rain beat and battered what remained of the race course, that hard-packed ribbon of compacted snow that ran from Cable to Hayward and on race day would be the center of the ski world for many. The rains hit it and hit it hard and left the race backed into the corner, beaten and bloodied and stumbling.

After the rains came they announced the race would, at best, go halfway, from Cable to Co. Hwy. OO, known in Birkie parlance as “Double Oh.” The Birkie was on the ropes and barely hanging on.

The rain on frozen ground left pools of water in low areas. The race crew brought portable generators and sump pumps to remove the water. The sound of generators and pumps filled the late February air in the middle of the winter woods; the heartbeat of the race on life support.

There is always hope. It springs, so we are told, eternal. There is hope when Rocky is beaten to a near pulp; there is hope when your team is down 25 in the Super Bowl; there is hope when Aaron Rodgers throws a Hail Mary that rises into the stratosphere before rainbowing down toward terra firma. Always hope.
The hope last week was the snowstorm forecast for Friday.

Five inches, maybe eight. Did someone hear a foot? Yes, a foot of snow coming in on Friday! They’d pack that snow down and Saturday morning run a race, a race shorter than planned but a race nonetheless. The snow would fall hard and pile up and the Birkie would swing hard, connect and raise arms in triumph.

Against all odds.

The snow was the hope and the salvation. That big storm was the Hail Mary come to Birkie-land, the Rocky Balboa comeback over Apollo Creed, the beaten and downtrodden rising up in triumph. The snow, the big snow, oh yes, that would make all things right and the largest race on the continent would rise up in all its power and glory and majesty.

On Friday it would snow; on Saturday we would ski. It was destiny. It would be the Miracle Birkie.

It didn’t happen. Not even close. The big storm was a narrow band of heavy snow but it moved south, shifted just a few degrees off target. The storm, on the weather map, was the shape of a dagger, long and thin and pointed. It missed the Birkie trail and in so doing cut out the heart of the big race.

Thirty miles away they got snow. Thirty miles; the distance, give or take, of the full length Birkebeiner, Cable to Hayward, start to finish.

On Friday morning skiers in town for the race pressed faces to windows and looked out at gray, funereal skies and snow flurries. The forecast had changed; less than an inch was due.

On this day there would be no comeback; on this morning there would be no glory; on this day, only heartache and disappointment and loss.

Eleven o’clock Friday morning and the announcement came: The race was cancelled. There would be no miracle comeback this time around.

February weather ….

I look at the weather forecast with a sense of foreboding. It looms as something not quite real, ethereal and dark like a thin edge of storm cloud etched dark on the horizon. It is unsettling as a sound in the dark of night. That’s all a forecast is, really: A sound in the dark that suggests ill will to come, nothing concrete, thought versus a reality, portent with the power of suggestion.

A mid-February forecast of temperatures at 50 degrees makes me edgy. That forecast is to me the sound in the night on the fringes of hearing that leaves me awake and wide eyed and straining to hear more. It is only after a while I can relax and accept what comes.

That’s the way I am. A winter forecast of warm weather to come unnerves me.

I look at the weather forecast repeatedly through the day; first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And in between as if it might change by repeated viewing. It never does, never changes, at least not a major shift. I may as well look at it once a day or not at all and just take what comes of it. But I do look at it, look at it a lot.

This weekend’s forecast shows warm and a chance of rain and all this in what should be prime ski season with the Birkebeiner a week away. I don’t think of the Birkebeiner as often as I think of the weather but the difference is not as great as you may imagine. I never put on a pair of skis without thinking of the Birkie and usually, if the snow is good, I start skiing in December so the race is on my mind a lot; a constant, just like the weather.

Ski the Birkie enough times and you’ll see most of it all when it comes to weather. I’ve started out at minus 15 degrees and over 30 degrees. I’ve skied it during a snowstorm and during freezing rain. I’ve seen deep snow on beautiful days or decaying snow that left bare patches on days that smelled of springtime. I’ve seen good days and bad, good times and not so good; felt exhilaration and despair.

Now, with a week to go, I look at the weather forecast and feel unease and uncertainty. And I think to myself, “Why doesn’t it get easier?” For the worries still are with me in the days leading up to the race. I check the weather forecast with what appears to be an obsession, fret over the possibilities, worry with each day about the potential for things to go wrong.

Things blur with time. I can remember bits and pieces of races but I do not have crystal clarity of any of them. The Birkie to me is a tapestry of interwoven threads that form a whole cloth; no one thread stands alone.

Except, perhaps for one. A time ages ago, 1981, when we had a thaw come roll over the land like a wave of despair. I remember calling friends who were at Telemark Lodge when there was a lodge and when all things Birkebeiner were orbits of that place. I remember calling and asking of conditions and being told it was 60 degrees with pouring rain and the snow was going fast.

That was not good news but in my life it was the least of it.

My mother died that week. Cancer took her after a long struggle. I’d watched her suffer in pain without complaint. She died on a dreary day as February snow was decaying. Despair and sorrow were heavy on my mind. We scheduled her funeral for Saturday, the day of the Birkie.
I can’t really say if I felt any sadness that I’d miss the race. It wasn’t important, not that week. Not much was.

Then it rained that ungodly rain and the snow washed away and they could not hold the race. On the day the Birkebeiner was scheduled we buried my mother under sullen cloud in late February.
They did not cancel the race, they merely postponed it. As if, fat chance, there would be snow in two weeks after the original date. Except that there was. Except that a freak blizzard dumped a ton of snow on the race course and two weeks later against all odds and against all expectations they held the race.

I don’t remember much about the details in that race. I remember it was a smaller field of skiers; many who’d flown in for the original date could not return. I remember there was plenty of snow and the track was good. I remember that I skied very well, moving up through the ranks of skiers ahead of me, passing one and then another.

I remember getting to the halfway point and a friend was there and he looked at me in wide-eyed shock and said, “Geez Mode, you’re in second place!” I remember thinking to myself, I don’t think I can hold it.

I didn’t. The lack of training caught up to me and one skier and then another and another passed me. I remember leaning on my poles, dead in the water with a long way to go and knowing it was over for me. I remember wishing I could have skied a better race in memory of my mother.

I ended up, heck, I’m not even sure; 12th or 18th or something; a long way from second.
So it went. So it goes. Next year I skied it again and I’ve kept on skiing it.

But I still worry about the weather. I still obsess about the forecast. I still fret and worry. And every year, every single Birkebeiner, I remember my mother and all she meant to me.

Good old-fashioned skiing will cure what ails you

I’ve been fighting a cold. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to sound whiney. My nose is stuffy; I feel clumsy; I nod off in the chair at night, wake with a neck-snapping jerk, think to myself, “It must be 10, 10:30 at least.” Look at the clock; 8:30.

I go to bed early, swallow mystery pills that Sally assures me will send a cold packing, eat hot soup and drink liquids. It’s not real serious, just annoying. There’s some nasty stuff going around, variations on the flu that’ll knock you into next week and leave you pale and wasted and not enjoying life very much. That’s serious. What I’ve got is just a niggling little thing.

I blame the weather. I don’t blame the weather for much but I blame it for my cold. It was the thaw over the past two weeks, that ugly January Thaw that came early and stayed late. Temperatures above freezing, rain, snow turning gray; gloom and doom ruled the land.

At long last it turned cold and things were normal except for the streets and sidewalks; they resembled a glacier. I walk to work on glazed walkways and think to myself that people my age fall and break hips and are never the same again. This does not improve my mood or my confidence.

But that’s not what I blame my cold on. No, I contend, and have for decades, that winter weather with temperatures in the high 20s and 30s is just not any good for a body. You often get humidity along with the rising temperatures, sometimes some fog, and it all just settles like some otherworldly miasma. And it makes you sick.

Or so I believe. I have no facts to back this. I don’t need them. Cold winter weather? Ten above, zero, below zero: Nobody gets colds or flu then. It’s the thaw that gets you.

I once read something to the effect that more people do in fact get colds during times of warmer winter weather but that was based on the fact that in moderate temperatures people are more likely to go out and mingle. And if they have a cold or flu they pass it along. In bitter cold, so the study went, people who are under the weather stay home and don’t mix.

Maybe that’s true. I prefer to think that cold weather, hard January cold, kills germs, and warmish, damp weather encourages their growth.

So I blame the thaw for my little cold.

I also blame the thaw for the fact I wasn’t able to do much to fight my cold. Short reason; the warm weather messed up the ski trails and so I was not able to get out and ski. And why, you might certainly ask, does that matter? Another of my truths: Cross country skiing can cure what ails you. Period.

There is nothing to back this up either, understand. No facts. I still take it as gospel, a rock solid foundation on which to enjoy better health in the winter.

If I’m fighting some ailment, achy muscles, a cold, some bug or whatever, I go skiing. I bundle up good, put on an extra layer of insulation, and then I ski, nice and easy. I work up a good sweat. I do not ski fast. I do not ski long. I just ski. Warm weather or cold, I just ski.

Then I go home, take a hot shower, have some soup and take a nap. Works every time!

I think it’s best with the old time classic technique; skating doesn’t have the restorative power. Classic skiing, kick and glide, letting the muscles stretch and work, that’s the ticket. Ask most any skier, I think they’ll agree.

The past two weeks, what with the thaw, skiing was not an option. I worked in the wood shop building drawers for kitchen cabinets and breathing in sawdust. It did not do me much good in terms of fighting my cold. Wood work and hot soup just doesn’t cut it compared to skiing.

So I blame the weather, both for bringing on the cold and for me not being able to do much about it.

So it goes.

This week we got some snow, not much but enough. The ski trails were buffed up; the temperature was in the high teens. Just right!

I dressed the way I normally do then added another layer on top. I slid a neck gaiter to cover my throat and hold in the heat. Then I went skiing. Sally told me not to ski too long and I lied and said I would keep it easy.

I was chilled at the start. Ten minutes in the heat was building and it was as it should be. It was cloudy and breezy but after half an hour the sun started to break through. The snow was fresh and white and beautiful. I skied for an hour, paused, then kept on. I did not ski fast. I skied steady and easy and let the heat build.

The woods to the sides of the trail were freshened with the new snow; shadows and drifts gave it a look that was somehow dreamlike as if I had been set down in a new place far from home. But familiar; I’d been there before. I saw tracks, wolf or coyote, fresh in the snow. One of them was large and I leaned toward wolf versus coyote but I don’t know enough to be certain.

I skied for two hours and I was tired by the end. I drove home and heated up some soup and sat at the table and ate it. It was very good. Then I took a long, hot shower. I told Sally I felt better already.

Cold weather to kill the germs and time on skis, a cure for what ails you as January slides behind us and February looms large.

Winter in the Northwoods: Never know what Mother Nature has in store

There is no cold like the first cold of January. January cold is pure and real and piercing, searing and deep. January cold is the real cold of winter and when it comes all pretense falls away; winter is here and it is here to stay.
The cold of what, two, two and a half weeks past now? That cold was the cold of January come home to us. Minus 15 give or take; couple nights running.

Daytime better but not much. Above zero but not a whole lot above.

The first day or two, that cold really hurts a person. It runs deep and brings chill and despair. Couple that cold with nightfall that seems to drop like a heavy curtain in late afternoon and one feels like the world has become a harsh and cruel place. We deal with it. Live up here and you’d darn well better find some way to cope. Either that or start the long slide to cabin fever. That affliction will leave one ill tempered and bitter at every passing day, treating the cold as personal affront.

We got through it, that bitter cold. Then came snow, part and parcel of a normal Wisconsin winter. Say what you may but cold always bites harder over thin snow. Once we get a good layer of snow down the cold never seems as bad.

Thursday a week ago we skied, a trio of us, skied as temperatures budged a bit over ten above zero. The sky was blue and the sun bright over a couple inches of snow. It was a pretty good day to ski though one can argue that any day of skiing is a good day.

We skied out in the winter woods, into clear cut areas and back into the woods. There was a breeze but in the shelter of trees it was bearable. The ski trail was near to perfect; freshly cut, clear snow, tracks of a skier and dog ahead of us.

We did one loop in an hour then started another trail and came upon a pair of skiers. We stopped to visit. I mentioned the skier ahead of us with the dogs, the ones whose tracks we’d seen. The one skier looked at me like I was daft. “There’s nobody ahead of you. Those are wolf tracks.”

Oh.

I recovered best I could: “I guess that’s why they’re so big.”

Wolves, three of them, smart and efficient had been using the packed ski trail instead of the energy-robbing deep snow off to the side. We’d skied over their tracks for a few miles. They were cruising the woods as we were and, as were we, on the packed trail for easier going.

The woods in the presence of wolves seem a different place than not. We skied on, easy and smooth and enjoying it all. But the shadows seemed a bit deeper than before.

On Sunday, on a different trail, I looked up and off to the side and saw a snowshoe hare still as a statue in the shadow. I coasted past, stopped and turned back. The rabbit (yes, I know, a hare not a rabbit but c’mon, you know what I mean) did not move. I got close, a few ski lengths away. It hunched there, white fur, black sparking eye and gray shaded ears.

Then I moved and it bounded away and was lost to the thickness. And I thought: Wolves one day, hare the next time out; both ends of the predator/prey spectrum. Thought; I wonder how much of this I ski past, head down, eyes on the track ahead. I like to think I see things but in truth I really don’t. My loss.

I skied once again; the third time of the past week, on a day when the weather had turned and the temperatures had risen. The evening prior we met friends and commented that it had the feel of late winter, of March. The air was heavy and humid and there was scent of dirt. Winter can deliver up a lot of things but scent is not one of them. Winter is cold and snowy but there is rarely scent in the air. On this night the darkness carried the scent of spring.

Next day I skied as temperatures bumped 40 degrees, a full 60 degrees spread from the cold of a few weeks earlier. The sun was high and bright and there were no clouds at all. The trail was moist and the skis very slow and I had to work harder than I like. January thaw had come.

I skied an hour and a half. I did not see another soul; had the trails to myself. On this day there was no wolf sign, no hares or rabbits, nothing moving at all. I pushed on the poles, skied one loop, then another and a third. It felt like spring skiing; warm and breezy and very nice. I thought of the swings in it all, the unpredictable pendulum of season and weather and what it brings to us. Nature is never predictable no matter what we think.

That morning someone had asked if I ever got away in the winter. I assured him I did, every time I went skiing. “No, no,” he retorted, “I mean south, Florida, Mexico, someplace warm.”

I told him, “No reason to.” And I meant it.