There’s nothing wrong with my temperature-taker. Influenza, chicken pox and snotty noses aside, the thermometer says 96.2 on each of my healthy days. I’ve always justified my icy body temperature with a belief that a properly adapted Wisconsinite ought to have a temperature a little closer to her natural habitat. Not that the 2 degree difference helps me much on those -25 degree nights, but perhaps it explains my complete and total inability to enjoy warm weather. I suppose 90 feels a lot hotter to me than it does to you, and that’s why I become a whining, puffy mess of sweat and irritability when summer strikes – or at least that’s my theory.

So to give my Darwinian adaptability a run for its money I spent a few weeks of last summer in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was hot! Summer temperatures above 90 have been an extreme rarity for me, but the climate in Arkansas was a sauna of 95 plus nearly every day of my stay. After acclimating to my sweatier skin I was able to move beyond the weather, in an attempt to get my feet wet in Hot Springs.  Much to my surprise, and excepting a few natural substitutions (Harley Hogs for rusty Ford F-150s and chiggers for mosquitos) I felt completely and totally at home. Hot Springs is a small town  nestled in the Ozark Mountains. It’s surrounded by protected forests where its down-to-earth residents camp, fish, hike, and bike during the long warm summers. Its chief economic industry is tourism, just like Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, the town of my own birth.

Land O’, as it is affectionately called, is a similar oasis of natural charm. Chicago’s wealthy tourists have bought up much of the land in my hometown (a solid 7 hours due North of the Windy City) but never inhabit their lavish homes for more than a few weeks out of the summer months. While these cabins lay dormant for the autumnal Color-o-Rama of painted Birch, Maple, and Oak trees, the local community of just under 200 finishes up their home-canning and stocks their basement freezers with Blue Gills. When the Thick White Blanket covers all those abandoned log cabins along overpriced shorelines, my parents are driving out over their soon-to-be-pan-fried-dinners. The lake that had been the best bath in town 6 months ago is now likely to be one of the most navigable surfaces by four wheels. Balancing at the tippy-top of the great Badger State is a town that makes its money in the three months of above-freezing temperatures, then scrimps, scrapes, saves, and often prays its way through the other nine.

When I was growing up my father told me the story of the man down the road. He lived for years in a converted yellow school bus rigged with a wood burning stove in the back. Tearing through his stockpile of chopped timber one frigid January, the stove caught fire  to the frame of the bus. The flames ignited quickly throughout the rest of the small, cramped shelter and our neighbor was burned alive while the Aurora Borealis raged overhead. As a child I feared his ghost would find me if I bravely explored the abandoned lot. My feet were light as I darted amidst the remains of that old bus searching for fruitful berry bushes and wintergreen blossoms, but I was  always frightened and never stayed long.

Eventually, years later, the charred bus was removed and the remains cleaned up. Now, when suburban families of 4 and a half  drive down our road looking to buy their piece of the great Northwoods, they never know of the bus, our neighbor, nor of the incredible difficulty of survival in this beautiful place.There’s a story for every true inhabitant on our rustic lane. From the man down the road who still drives my father’s old 1985 Ford flatbed, to the elderly widow who bravely hunts berries, filberts and mushrooms every summer despite her Lyme’s disease, our town is full of colorful characters.

In my teenage years I dreamt ceaselessly of escaping Land O’ and Wisconsin, for the lights and the stardom of big city living. I wanted to see “culture” with a capital C , live for the enjoyment of art and fine food, and my snotty nose would be more likely to drop off my own face than to sit in the driver’s seat of a rusty pick-up truck. I’d forget how to use ice augers and chainsaws, and maybe, just maybe, I’d never see another red-flagged-tip-up for the rest of my charmed little life.

Well, I’m an adult now, and those things didn’t happen. In a story that is likely to be told in a future post, I tried to run, but discovered that you can’t escape your own blood, especially when it runs a chilly Wisconsinite blue. I’m no longer attracted to the privilege and frivolity of  city life, but to the gutteral and physical struggles inherent in truly surviving. These days I call my parents to remind me where the filbert patches are and to double-check the lethality of my mushroom finds. They struggled and survived the great Northwoods to become a veritable wealth of wisdom and a deep well of inspiration. Now it is my turn to struggle and my only wish is survival. My battles may differ a bit from theirs, but the war has not changed. Wish me luck.