These photos were taken by Layne Kennedy. His work can be viewed here. He worked hard on this trip. Had to pack boot-warmers around his cameras to keep them working.

Watch the full episode. See more In Wisconsin.

We were lucky…our plow truck, a little tractor with a loader (thank you you-know-who) and all Sunday to carve paths where needed.  Also plenty of dry wood in the woodshed, a crooked little Christmas tree glowing in the corner, and my wife as always making profound food appear out of thin air.  Oh, and an insulated coop so this morning the chickens were perky and unaffected by the temps.

Favorite memory from yesterday: Eldest daughter has long been invited to meet the neighbor’s daughter of same age.  With everything canceled yesterday and the neighbor girl and her family stranded at the far end of a socked-in driveway that nears a mile in length, daughter and I bundled up, put on snowshoes, and trekked cross-country (roughly a mile-and-a-half) and over the wind-carved expanses, then down through a snow-daubed pine grove to the neighbor’s house.  I hiked home to continue plowing.  By 7 p.m. the temperature had dropped to 4 degrees and the neighbors were still not plowed out (the snow was so drift-packed my pickup plow wouldn’t bust it, and our tractor scoop is no match for a driveway that long).  So I dressed for the temperatures, put on a pair of cross-country skis, and my wife helped me lash my daughter’s skis and poles to a backpack and I set out again, this time in the dark.  With those temps and relatively strong wind, I was concerned about my daughter making the trip home.  But we took the time to dress right, with good layers and neck and ankle gaiters, and off we went.

We had headlamps, but we switched them off for most of the trip, as the sky was so starry and clear and the snow so dominant that the fingernail of moon lit the night so well we were casting crisp shadows.

She was a trouper.  Not only uncomplaining about the cold but chattering about how much she enjoyed her visit, and stopping to pick out Orion’s belt.  I cheated at the end, fishing out my cell phone and calling home so my wife could see our headlamps bobbing along the homestretch.  She waved from the window.

I am by nature often a grumpy self-involved cuss.  I worry sometimes about how my daughter will remember me.  But I hope she reads this some day and knows how proud I was of how she just strapped those skis on and pushed off into the single-digit wind like it was the most natural thing in the world, and how – after listening to her talk and pick out stars and never break stride – when I bid her goodnight I was filled with a warmth that had nothing to do with that old woodstove of ours.

I have a ten-minute section in the current monologue about how those of us in snow country pick up certain arcane skills and knowledge as a result of freezing our hinders over the years.  How we can judge the temperature just by how little the pine needles are wiggling in the wind, how we can improve the output of our heaters with nothing more than three zip-ties and the flattened cardboard from a 24-pack of Old Milwaukee, that sort of thing.

So this was fun to read.  Funnily enough, the first commenter used material straight from my monologue…

The next time I smack my shin on the trailer hitch, I may have to just shut up and take it, because I’m pretty sure I used up my full annual allotment of naughty language during the hour-and-a-half it took me to hook up my “easy-attach” snowplow.

If it’s the blizzard of the decade and it STILL takes you longer to hook up your snowplow than it does to plow your quarter-mile driveway, you might be one of … well, OK, you might be ME.

Then again, if one of the great joys of your life is plowin’ snow with your little snow-suited copilots grinnin’ all gap-toothed beside you in the truck cab, well, then, yer definitely one of us.

It’s just snow, folks.  Let’er buck.

May I also say my original acquaintance with Mary came via her music, which remains her center.