One of the myths about Minnesotans—perpetuated, often, by Minnesotans ourselves—is that the cold is something we “adapt to” or “get used to.” It’s true at a certain level: we put plastic on our windows for insulation, and we carry scrapers and de-icer in our cars. Subzero temperatures, though, aren’t something human beings can physically adapt to. There’s a reason humans sprang from Africa and not Minnesota, or Siberia—the only other place on earth with such vast seasonal temperature extremes.
Winter in Minnesota is always cold, but only about once a decade does it get this cold, for this long. As has been widely reported, the governor has preemptively declared public schools closed on Monday, when the high temperature is forecast to be -14 degrees. Tomorrow is predicted to be just a few degrees warmer, and all week, except for a day or two of balmy temperatures in the tens and twenties, the temperature has hovered around zero.
The infrastructure here is built to handle cold winters, but when the temperature gets down to zero and stays there, you can feel how thin your layer of protection from the elements really is. That’s true of jackets—a thick wool coat feels like a windbreaker—but it’s also true of windows, many of which start to form rims of ice where the condensation trickles down and freezes.
Car ignitions fight to turn over, and every moving car part creaks and sticks. You have to scrape your windshield before you start the car, and then you have to pull over a mile later and scrape it again because the defroster can’t keep up. At the sides of streets, where cars are parked, thaw-and-freeze cycles create choppy wave-like glaciers that are near impossible to parallel-park on. When you drop someone off at her house, you watch to make sure she gets in, because, you know, there was that one time in Duluth when that girl lost her keys and…well, never mind the details, you don’t want that to happen.
Incredibly, this state has been inhabited for generations by people who had it even worse: from the American Indians and early European settlers, going stir-crazy in tiny mud huts while the snow piled up around them, to our parents, who used to have to run extension cords from the houses to their cars to power electric battery warmers. It also seems crazy to think that people live year-round in places that are even colder than this. How do they do it? How do we? Why do we?
Some people can’t handle it, and leave. Minnesotans who had always told themselves that they “like the seasons” discover that when they move to warmer climes, they suffer a twinge or two of nostalgia on Christmas Eve and then are happy as clams while those of us who stayed chatter our way through the interminable months of January and February, then unsuccessfully pray for the snow to stop in March, in April, and even in May. Then we’re finally granted a glorious spring, a month or two of heat that can get just as extreme as the cold does in winter, a few weeks of autumn, and then the snow starts again.
Yet, we stay. There are some decent objective reasons for this: the cost of living is relatively low, the employment situation is relatively good, and the quality of life is very decent if you can put up with the cold. Not everyone here is even from here: many people—a higher number, I think, than most Minnesotans realize—willingly come here and happily stay, whether from Iowa or from Somalia. Many of us, though, are here because of inertia: our families are here, our jobs are here, our homes are here. Thousands of years ago, migrants crossed what is now the Bering Strait and found their way to the center of the North American continent, and some of them decided to hang out here. People are still coming, and still staying.
Absurd as it seems during weeks like this, millions of us have cast our lot here, and we’re resolved to make the best of it. We’re even, perversely, proud of ourselves for doing so. An out-of-state visitor once told me that Minnesotans are good at “rallying”: even on stupid cold days, we find our way to bars and theaters and each other’s houses (not to mention each other’s beds), and we party.
On Friday, when Governor Dayton’s decision to shut school down was announced, the radio station where I work spontaneously decided that we’d make Monday a tropical party day, with special music and games all day in defiance of the weather. Why not? We’re here in this ridiculous, beautiful, frigid state, and even if that’s totally insane, we’re not going anywhere—we’d better rally. Frozen margaritas, anyone?
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