Silenced Spring

Snow devils danced on the lake ice on Tuesday. It had snowed quite a bit on Monday after which the temperature fell far and fast. It had climbed from -2°F to about 15°F when the devils began to dance. We though it was just another attack of ZOMBIE WINTER. We were wrong.

All during the cold times and the less cold times of last week, the creeks carried melt water into the lake. Huzzah!

It started to snow again on Wednesday. By Thursday morning it was clear that we were victims of another horseman of the snowpocalypse, Silenced Spring. Not as cold as ZOMBIE WINTER but packing deeper snow, Silenced Spring is the least feared of the four horsemen due to its lack of staying power but still. There was shoveling.

The bears are coming out of their long winter slumber. Last year, local bruins pulled down our bird feeder and cleaned it out. Now I'm no biologist, but this year, as if to underscore how hard this Winter has been, the bears appear to have shrunk. I don't think 10 of these new, fun sized Yogies could knock down a feeder.

It did get over freezing late in the week and the maples began to run like crazy.

We've got another 10 gallons in bottles and are boiling sap down 24 hours a day. This year's maple syrup season may have been saved by Silenced Spring.

There was a lot of snow to clear near the weekend. What started as just a common clearing of a patio became Snowhenge.

The icy pillars stood over 2 meters tall! It's been rumored that when the shadows of the great columns come into alignment with the webcam it will be the end of the world or night or something.

After all the snow, cold, and less cold there's 21 inches of ice on the lake.

The pier with the nail was left in the lake over the winter and it was melted enough at the legs for the first lake level measurement of the year. Thirty and three quarters inches below the nail is almost four inches higher than Lake Lucerne was at ice-in! Yay!

It's been a hard Winter. We on Lake Lucerne have had the rare pleasure of enduring visits from all four horsemen of the snowpocalypse. ZOMBIE WINTER, Silenced Spring, Albino Thanksgiving, and January attacks can be painfully cold and shove-ly experiences separately, but visits by all four of them have all left deep physical and emotional scars on the landscape and people of northern Wisconsin. We lived. I think it'll make us treasure Summer all the more. Time to finish off that last minute paper work for a boat gas loan and start planning to get those piers in.

-Nemo, not so afraid of bears this year

Silenced Spring

April 15th through 21st, 2014