Lake Turned Perfect XC Moonscape

We've been cross country skiing on the lake at night. The past few nights have been spectacular for this endeavor with the full moon lighting our way. . . or the light pollution reflecting off the cloud cover, as the case may be. Matt's borrowed a XC ski set-up from a work friend, and I took my skis out of their long multi-winter storage (see Mom, I told you I'd use them for a long time! : ) so we could take advantage of the mostly clear lake surface for some athletic exploration.




My resourceful friend Laura actually prompted our adventuring with a link she sent me to a list of snowshoeing opportunities around the city that included Nokomis across the street. The list included a few nighttime wildlife walks by snowshoe and I figured if the parks people can romp around the lake on snowshoes in the dark, there wasn't any reason we couldn't ski. Especially when past nightfall seemed to be the only time we didn't have other stuff going on.

I struggle to find appropriate words for the exhilaration and refreshment I received as we traveled further and further from shore. . . Winter in the city is always muted, but the silence of the frozen lake was nature in its most dampened state. The moonscape exuded a zen-like calm that forced me to periodically just stop and breathe deeply as I admired the moonlight reflecting off the gentle wind ripples composed of snow and ice. Gentle is probably the wrong word for the fierce winds that formed them, but in the still air of the night, they happily embraced the description. Abandoned fishing holes proved easy to spot, since they were the only protruding mounds as far as the eye could see. On our way back to shore we saw two other adventurous souls pulling a sled out from shore towards the Cedar Ave bridge for some moonlight ice fishing, so we knew we weren't the only ones, which was nice.

Saturday we talked Saul and Noel into joining us for an XC ski outing on the lake after dinner, and it proved to be equally as awe inspiring, albeit a tad bit chillier with a breeze at our backs as we headed back to the house where a toasty fire and nightcaps were waiting.