All over the internet I see images of thick white snow drifts, of winter sunsets that light up the sky, frozen falls and ski trips, saunas nestled in the snow and hot coco on hill tops— images from the last strongholds of winter.
My feed is covered with images from these places that still experience true winter— from Finland and Norway, from the Rockies and northern Canada, and of course, from home, the Northern Midwest. My feed is full of deep winter images from home too. I see snow covered bridges and rivers winding beneath them, and lighthouses caked in lake ice, harbors filled with pancake ice.
The reality is that in Northern Minnesota, which used to be one of those last winter places where if no where else, you could count on snow, the ground is brown. All of our dogsled races are cancelled and temperatures soar to the mid-40s. Winter tourism, a key part of keeping our small businesses doors’ open, is at an all time low (source anecdotal, from just living in a small town)1. Snow still lingers in the higher elevations and inland off the lake, but it’s patchy and brown.
Still, I log on to Instagram and my feed is filled with a colder version of winter. We post the snowy scenes from last year, the shots from a trip somewhere cold, the spotty patches of winter we experience this year and online it creates the illusion that winter is still alive and well, just somewhere else.
I think a lot about Instagram and collective illusion. When it’s trendy to post shots of beautiful place and the wild, it gives the illusion that wilderness is still abundant. We angle photos to crop out the railing, and something can look like deep wilderness from a roadside. Just looking at my feed, there’s a frozen river canyon that’s less than a half mile from the road, and not a technical trip at all. There’s a set of shots of the full moon, all taken within a five minute walk from my car, and the same can be said of the images of Lake Superior at forty below. Turn around and you’ll see a parking lot.
Outdoors Instagram has kind of ruined our scale of how much wilderness, as in areas not yet industrialized in some way by modern humans, is left. The answer is a disturbing actually not that much.
There’s nothing wrong with taking pretty photos from a roadside pullout of course, or sharing old winter photos from previous years, but I do wonder what it does for our overall perception of winter and wilderness. When it’s gray and raining on the last day of January, I comfort myself of images of the Arctic knowing that winter probably still exists, even if every year winter gets chipped away at.
(I’ll still post my old wintery photos and seek out patches of snow and ice to share. I think one of the best things we can actually do to save winter is help others learn to love it, remind each other that it is worth saving.)
In part this warm snap, of course, is not due to increasing global temperatures, but a historically strong El Nino year. Nonetheless, the EPA reports statistically significant ice cover decrease in the last two decades on Lake Superior. The EPA considers ice cover on the Great Lakes to be a climate change indicator.
I think about winters a lot, and how even though I sometimes struggle through them, I still want them. I think about the Apostle Islands Ice Caves, and how the last time they were accessible from the surface of Lake Superior was 2015, almost ten years ago.
I think too about the small businesses up here, where historically November and April are the hardest months. Winter usually brings the ski and winter hiking crowd. Today though, January is looking a lot like April— muddy and patchy ice.
Still, I’m trying to make the best of the winter we have. With the Big Lake ice free, I’ve been able to get out and sea kayak. With the trails snow-free, hiking trails that are often snowed completely in might be accessible. It seems like a good year for winter backpacking, something I’ve always toyed with but haven’t done yet.
Speaking of the Apostle Islands Ice Caves, these aren’t the caves people typically reference when they’re talking ice, but they are cave and arches just outside of the park. Due to the lack of lake ice, we were able to sneak out and paddle the ice caves, something that you can usually only do in April!
Winter kayaking on Lake Superior is definitely not a beginner coastal kayaking activity, and not a recreational kayaking activity period. Everyone pictured here has guided locally and is very familiar with the lake and has 5+ years of coastal kayaking experience and is fully equipped with deep water self rescue equipment, drysuits, spare paddles, marine radios, ect.
for a beginners guide to winter kayaking, click here!
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It’s actually kind of remarkable just how much the winter tourism has impacted everyone. Just about every business I’ve been in the past week or so, from the Holiday Gas Station to Duluth Gear Exchange to the coffee shops, has remarked on how slow this winter has been tourism wise. So many of the businesses and families up this way depend on the winter to make a living, whether through winter tourism directly or winter sports. A lot of people up here complain about the tourism, and I think that’s definitely fair sometimes— when it’s busy and your understaffed people on vacation tend to be not particularly understanding. But it’s really wild to see just how much every business here, even those not directly linked to tourism like the gas station. Communities are so interlinked— when some of us hurt all of us hurt.
I’m from the south, and have never experienced a proper winter. The concept of winter — snowflakes and ice cicles and snow angels — were always the stuff of (literal) dreams. It’s devastating to know that dreams may actually be the only thing left of it in the future. This was hard to read, but in the best way. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
Those ice cave-kayaking shots are gorgeous!