I was doing pretty well until the cold set in last week. We had all skated through a balmy November that was surprisingly generous with its sunlight.
But when that cold set in upon the deep dark of December, I felt like a Russian peasant in the Kamchatka Peninsula going out to tend my reindeer. I didn't want to tend my reindeer, or for that matter even walk the dog. What I wanted to do was immerse myself in a huge vat of tuna-noodle casserole and not climb out until April.
We choose to live here, but I can't deny that this final descent to the winter solstice does get to me. I think the darkness may be a larger part of it than the cold.
Which is why I got a little cranky when I saw that line of coal cars lined up along the Lakewalk last week. As you may know by now, the North Shore Scenic Railroad, contradicting its own name, allowed them to be stored there in exchange for rent payment.
Beyond missing stolen glances at Lake Superior, I realized that with winter's low sun angle, those cars cast long shadows onto the highway. Where I had once driven in sunlight, I now skulked along in the shadows of cold steel.
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I was happy, then, to learn that the railroad museum had decided to shuffle the cars to a less conspicuous spot along the line soon. It's hard enough tending my reindeer in full sunlight.
I know what cures this curse of dark and cold. It works every year. It's the sound of human voices woven together in a concert hall or a humble church. The singers might be a high school a cappella choir (your kid is fifth from the left, third riser, looking radiant) or a church congregation holding candles on Christmas Eve, singing "Silent Night."
I have no kids in a cappella anymore, but I might just show up to hear someone else's kids. We'll all be packed together in the audience, two or three generations to a family, waiting to be carried away. Then the basses and baritones will start rumbling, and the altos and sopranos will drop in from on high. They'll all come together like a tributary mingling with its mother river, and the music will wash over the room like current, carrying us all along.
And then, in the dark, little rivulets will form near the corners of many eyes because -- why? Because this is the way it has been since people chanted in caves? Because when you hear those kids you believe there is hope for the world? Or is it because we simply need these lovely voices so badly in the cold and dark?
I don't know.
But I will carry the music with me when I trudge out to my reindeer in the morning.
SAM COOK is a Duluth News Tribune columnist and outdoors writer. Reach him at (218) 723-5332 or scook@duluthnews.com . Follow him on Twitter at "samcookoutdoors."
