The Late Winter Blahs, and How to Beat Them

 

As the gray days of early March rolled in, we conceived of a perfect antidote to the later winter blahs—go to St. Paul.

It was a Thursday morning. We made a quick stop at the Center for Book Arts in downtown Minneapolis, where some very dense and interesting hand-made paper by a woman named Mary Hark was on display. The sheets were a far cry from anything resembling an actual book, but they were coarse, earthy, and cool.

"My shoulders and arms aware of the weights of buckets filled with pulp," Hark writes, "pulling and couching one sheet of paper at a time, with only the soft sound of water dripping from my mould into the vat ...."

We saw the Vikings stadium close up and personal for the first time (it's BIG) while trying to find the 6th Street entry ramp onto I-94, then hurried across town to catch a Schubert Club Courtroom Concert featuring young singers from the Minnesota Opera. I was prepared to drive around for awhile in search of a parking spot, or even to splurge for a slot in the ramp, but we came upon perhaps the best open meter we've ever scored, right in front of the Landmark Center. It was going to be a good day.

World's best parking spot

The recital was outstanding. It featured six young singers doing arias and duets from Song Poet, Don Giovanni, and Lucia de Lammermoor and a couple of Spanish zarazuelas, all to spirited piano accompaniment. The moods were varied but the voices were lovely and the emotions almost uniformly powerful.

After the performance we fed a couple more dollars into the meter and walked two blocks past handsome if slightly bedraggled building facades to the Grey Duck Tavern for lunch. It's situated in the old Lowry Hotel and the windows face south, toward the Mississippi, which lets in lots of nice light. The food was pretty good, the waitresses were friendly. The state wrestling tournament was in session, and we watched groups of geeky high school kids from out of town wander the sidewalks while we ate.  

 Our final stop was the Grand Hand Art Gallery on Grand Avenue, famous for its locally made pottery. Lots of artistry to me to admire and Hilary to draw ideas and inspiration from.

As we returned to the car we passed a row of apartment building where some good friends lived very early in their relationship, and I felt a twang of nostalgia as we passed.

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Two days later, the gray returned, and we headed east again, this time in the direction of one of the most obscure corners of St. Paul, unknown even to most residents: the Grey Cloud Dune Scientific and Natural Area. To reach it you must traverse the backstreets of suburban Cottage Grove, past a grade school that might have been built in 1960 and two immense warehouses. The first one is empty, though it bears the name Ryan Construction. I noticed on a sign our near the street that 832,000 square feet of space are available for lease. One block down, on the other side of the street, Renewal by Anderson is in the process of building a new warehouse that looks to be about the same size ...

What interested me more were the horned larks we saw rising from the side of the road here and there along Ideal Avenue. That's a nice name, and a nice bird. I wouldn't call it a sign of spring, but they do tend to appear at this time of year. You rarely get a look as good as one here in the photo. They're always flying off as you approach.

We parked at the end of the road, just past the decrepit farm with the barking dog and the MAGA flag hoisted on the pole, and hiked out across the dunes on  crusty snow, down the hill to the railroad tracks,  with a frozen backwater of the Mississippi River a few hundred yards below us and the steaming stacks of the Flint Hills refinery in the distance on the far side of the river. 

It was good to see the forms of the dead weeds against the blinding snow, and to see the contours of the land and feel it underfoot. At one point I thought I heard the croak of a passing sandhill crane in the distance. A little early for that; maybe it was a crow? 

We stood on the tracks and watched four bald eagles soaring high above us, with the orb of the sun trying to break through the thick gray clouds. The ballast under the tracks consisted of uniformly superb chunks of granite, as far as I could tell, and those colors offered a vivid and welcome contrast to the bleached out black-and-white landscape we were hiking through.

Our next stop was a cafe on Payne Avenue called East Side Thai. This is not a neighborhood we visit often. On a cold gray Saturday, we could have been anywhere: Philadelphia? Newark? The posted sign limited the seating to 43 people, but I can hardly imagine it would hold that many. Hilary enjoyed watching the locals arrive for their take-out orders.  The food was tasty and the staff was friendly. Who cares if the upholstery on the booth was ripped?

A few blocks down the hill we pulled into the parking lot at Morelli's liquor store, a no-frills establishment famous for its low prices, full-page newspaper ads, and no-nonsense tone. The aisles are narrow, and the joint is always bustling. Minnesota Monthly describes it as "a rare liquor store that not only sells liquor, wine and beer, but also offers authentic Italian sausages, meats and pasta, along with takeout pizza. Cash only." Delivery men bringing in cases of beer and wine on aluminum two-wheelers are a frequent shopping hindrance. On our last visit we bought one of their huge bake-at-home pizzas. This time, we stuck to the wine.

Undercover Brother

Our last stop was the conservatory at Como Park. To fill your eyes with green as you walk through the fern- and tree-filled halls satisfies some primal visual thirst. It's not quite like a week in Costa Rica, but it's nice. The foxgloves and cyclamens in the sunken garden are lovely, too.