This Week in Hatchet Creek

Here we are in another new year. Has everyone made their New Year’s Resolutions? Has anyone kept their resolutions for one solid week?

I’ve decided that my resolution for retirement is to move to someplace warmer than Wisconsin in the winter. For the last few days we have had record cold temperatures here in the Northwoods. For the second day in a row school was cancelled because of forecasted wind chills of forty below.

Twenty years ago was the last time we had temperatures this cold. I remember January of 1994 as the first winter I was alone with my kids following my divorce. I was commuting to Rhinelander for work every day. That one crisp morning in January, I woke up, heard the forecast and that school was closed and decided that I wasn’t going to work, whether anyone liked it or not. I only called in twice because of the weather in the twelve years that I drove the thirty miles to Rhinelander, that day and one other time when a thick layer of ice covered every surface out of doors.

I remember lots of Wisconsin winters when I was a kid. School was only cancelled if the thermometer ready “-40”. None of this forecasted wind chill business. And if there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground, but the plows got out early enough, they still held school. Your bus just might not being running that day, so you could get excused if you were one of those kids. Naturally, on those days, my mom offered to drive us the five miles into school. A foot of snow wasn’t going to stop her Chevy Impala. And nobody had four-wheel drive, but somehow we still got around in our old sedans and rear-wheel pickup trucks.  

Anyway. There are still lots of outdoor events scheduled this winter. One Polar Plunge already occurred on January 1 and another one is planned for February. I can’t keep track of all the ice fishing tournaments coming up. Those are two activities I will never understand. Leave the fish under the ice where they are happy and us humans need to stay out of the water altogether.

I’ll have to let you know how all these happenings turn out. In the meantime, don’t forget your friends here in Hatchet Creek, where the dogs are mostly lab-mixes, the cats are often feral and whitetail deer have been known to roam the city streets.  

I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of our frozen town this week, but I did make it out to my garage. With the cold temperatures there is a lot of talk about bringing in your pets. I do let these three in when it gets this cold, but they are still pretty spoiled. The orange cat is sitting in a heated water bowl - minus the water. The other two are sleeping on expensive electric pet-beds. I don't know why they are looking at me in such disdain. Oh, that's right, they're cats.