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The house feels kind of empty right now. We had family over for Christmas and got to spend ten days showing our granddaughter the North Woods. Addie loves snow but she doesn’t get a chance to see much in her home town of Atlanta, Georgia.

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I kept our pond clear of snow so that we could skate, play hockey, slide on the ice and make snow angels when more snow arrived.

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Some of the tracks in the snow that we followed were pine martin, fox, snowshoe hare, squirrel and deer. On Christmas night we hiked to the ridge behind our house in the moonlight and howled to the wolves to see if we could get a response. Addie loved to be outside under the full moon. After each wolf call, she would get a case of the giggles that would last for some time. Listening to her giggle was more precious than if the wolves would have answered us.

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We did find a red fox up the Gunflint trail. This one spends its afternoons at Trail Center-- a restaurant about half way up the Gunflint trail. The fox comes to Trail Center frequently enough that they have named her “Cookie”. We had great food and also got entertained by “Cookie”.

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The trees on top of all the ridges like the palisades at Clearwater Lake were covered with frost.

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The frost covered trees against a blue sky are pretty spectacular.

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