Minnesota and My Love

You Will Never Understand

from JoeUser Forums

         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.
4,826 views 30 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Beautifully written. I have never experienced a Minnesota winter, but it sounds wonderful. I miss the changing seasons.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Very nice description and imagery! I like the feeling that it evokes and obviously represents.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top

Very nice description and imagery! I like the feeling that it evokes and obviously represents.

Thank you, I feel that this is one of the most direct articles I have ever written.

Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
grey...are you away from Minnesota?

We just moved from the Fargo-Moorhead area to Las Vegas and...as you might well expect, we absolutely hate it.

When I get up every morning I check out what's going on in MN on startribune.com

I miss this time of year...its my FAVORITE in Minnesota. I love how the air turns from heavy to crisp, the smell of the fallen leaves, the freshness and promise of a fall rain...
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
BBBRRRRRR..........(shiver).........so very cold............
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top

grey...are you away from Minnesota?

Yes I am in Texas now, it was a conversation on the phone with my daughter that prompted the article I am also planning a move to Arizona soon which I am told is quite lovely but I am sure I will need to adjust some more.

Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
It's not so bad... it's a dry heat. heh.
I could run 3 miles there and be dry afterwards. And you've seen me at PT here.
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top

I could run 3 miles there and be dry afterwards. And you've seen me at PT here.

Having trouble imagining it.

Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
You didn't get your love of the cold from your mama. But I was amazed and joyed by your poetic expressions. Glad you talked to K. I also called her yesterday. She is so mature for her age.
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top

your poetic expressions

If I could only stay mildly inebriated all the time I might improve my writing! Hard to walk that fine line though...

Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top
Hard to walk that fine line though...


So, what exactly happens when you hit the auto pilot and you're already at home?
Reply #12 from JoeUser Forums Top
I have never experienced a Minnesota winter, but it sounds wonderful

Don't be sucked in by the pretty words! It's a trap, I tell you!
Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
I could run 3 miles there and be dry afterwards.


Yes, and if it's huachuca, you'd have the dry heaves too, what with the no oxygen altitude. Everytime I ran there for the first month I was gasping like a fish. BTW WTF? Leaving our happy ft. hood family? How the hell did you manage that, you lucky bastard?
Reply #14 from JoeUser Forums Top
Oh, he'll be leaving soon. And by "soon," he means "never."

(Actually, I think he meant "soon," as in comparison to how long he has already been at the unit.) (And by "at the unit," I mean...)
Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top

what exactly happens when you hit the auto pilot and you're already at home?

I just go to bed. Or swan dive from apartment balconies

Pseudo has it dead on... I am so desensitized at this point that a year or more from now qualifies as "soon".

Reply #16 from JoeUser Forums Top
And by "desensitized," he means... [insert joke here]

(And by "insert joke here," I mean "Hot Chow!")
Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top

Hot Chow earns the Insightful!

Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
What is this "snow" that you speak of?
Reply #19 from JoeUser Forums Top

What is this "snow" that you speak of?

It is the stuff you write your name in.

Reply #20 from JoeUser Forums Top
Hot Chow earns the Insightful!


How about "Hot Lunch"?
Reply #21 from JoeUser Forums Top

How about "Hot Lunch"?

That actually where the joke came from... There is a guy inour unit who loves to say Hot Chow! for almost everything. Everytime he does it I just think Hot Lunch which makes me chuckle.

Reply #22 from JoeUser Forums Top
That actually where the joke came from... There is a guy inour unit who loves to say Hot Chow! for almost everything. Everytime he does it I just think Hot Lunch which makes me chuckle.


Very nice!
Reply #23 from JoeUser Forums Top
And by "Very nice," you mean, "What a freak?" He also, when asked how he is, replies, "Golden... not unlike a shower."

Now our entrie ELINT section says that. (And you think WE are disturbed? I'm going sane in a mad world! Saddle up, space ponies! We're making gravy... without the lumps!)
Reply #24 from JoeUser Forums Top
Even my daughter knows the call that only the deep cold can make.


Yeah she just loves it when I make her put on her snowsuit to take down the garbage....she goes into total teenager mode then, rolling her eyes and groaning. I just can't wait for the real teen years. And yes, she'll still be taking down the garbage then too.

Minnesota is nice, but I'm definately more of a summer person. Ice fishing? Only bearable with massive quantities of alcohol. Snowmobiling? Eh...again, barhopping. No wonder Minnesotans like their whickey!

You remember the time you went to some training in January when stationed out in MD? That "Blizzard of '94" or was it '95? And I went home to Minnesota to visit while you were away. And your kind squad leader called our apartment to see if I was OK and to ask if I needed someone to dig us out. It was ironic because I checked our messages from Oleteach's apt. At the time we had just got what seemed like 6 feet of snow. And in fact couldn't leave the apartment because the snow had drifted such so the doors wouldn't open. So I wanted to give him a call back and say, "YES! We need someone to dig us out!"

I could go on, but this comment is already too long. I'll just say this: I think some people are hard wired for the cold weather. And some are not.

Reply #25 from JoeUser Forums Top
I admit you are very poetic in your reminicing......but you are a psycho! Cold sucks.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and I hated the below zero weather and the 10 feet of snow. I agree with Xtine that some people are hard wired for cold weather and some are not......but I still suspect that you are insane...