I love Minnesota. Let me make that clear. I long for the smell of cold. I crave that silence after a blizzard when the world stops and takes note of the snow-hare. I adore the tracks a hound makes when it trails that same hare. I melt inside to remember the trusting gaze of a doe who knows I hold neither malice nor firearm.

         Those who were not raised in the North might think me crazed but I love Winter.  I enjoy the feeling of being tested every day for my fitness as a scion of the human race.

         I desire that feeling in the morning when you awake in the perimeter of melted snow created solely by your own body heat and ingenuity. I love the evening call of the timber wolf as he looks for the sustenance only made available thorough the sacrifice of the less worthy.

         Even my daughter knows the call that only the deep cold can make. The impulse to warmth that only long exposure to near killing frost can inculcate.

         I love Minnesota. It remains my home.