By Anne Groebner

Many, many winters ago, my husband and I packed a very large trailer with all of our belongings and, in mid-February under a “snow” moon, we drove across snowy and icy roads in northern Minnesota, towards a new life in sunny Arizona. When we left, it was minus 54 degrees. When we arrived in Phoenix, it was in the eighties. I thought I would never miss the frozen and busted pipes under our house, which had resulted in using a makeshift bathroom outside at night, while maneuvering in a down-filled jumpsuit and while being eight months pregnant. Or the deer mice that ran through the walls at night just over my head. That is, until I recently started binge-watching Northern Exposure again. (I’m just starting the sixth season.) I had always thought that Cicely, Alaska (a.k.a. Roslyn, Washington) resembled that old, small town where we used to live.

Our home in Ely was about five miles from Canada (as the crow flies). It was where I really began my love for winter. I grew up in Wisconsin and it was cold but not as frigid as it was living just miles from the Quetico. It’s where I met and married my husband, who taught at the college I attended. I was a non-traditional student, and worked for him through a work-study program at the International Wolf Center. It’s where I tweaked my cross-country skiing and snowshoeing skills while leading groups out onto frozen lakes and cross-countrying across frozen tundras. It was also where my love for sled dogs originated. 

I was studying wilderness management, so we spent about eighty percent (or more) of the time outdoors. Even so, I don’t remember ever being cold. Not only was I too busy to think about it, but the people of this small northern Minnesota town taught me how to dress to stay warm in winter. Not to mention the warmth that radiated off of them — a community that looked out for each other, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. 

We didn’t have television up there so we watched movies occasionally on my roommate Nancy’s VHS tape player. Her mom would record Northern Exposure and send us the tapes so we could watch it. It was a major event when those tapes showed up. We would all gather around her TV to watch the next episode. It reminded all of us of our surroundings — we were winter people. In fact, I didn’t meet my roommate for months when I first got to school because she was in Antarctica working with scientists. They would come to northern Minnesota to hire their workforce because the residents there were always subjected to extreme cold and could handle it. It was just as Garrison Keeler always described it on his show, Prairie Home Companion, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” 

One of my neighbors, Jim, was a wilderness author who lived “off the grid.” Some of my classmates and I would trek or ski over to his house to read Thoreau or Emerson or just talk wilderness in his snug cabin, warmed only by a wood-stove. There was no running water or electricity — pretty primitive. I loved the smell of the wood and I loved the coziness and camaraderie of our group talks. These were the years of my greatest learning, the years when I had nothing weighing me down. I was free to experience everything that influenced my future in so many ways. 

One night, after one of our group talks at Jim’s cabin, I had to leave before everyone else because I had a test the next day. It was snowing very hard and as I was skiing down the long, twisting drive toward the gate, I noticed a set of tracks just ahead of me. They were fresh tracks and looked as if they were made by a very large canine. I knew right away that it was a wolf. The tracks stayed in front of me all the way to the main road. It was one of the many times I had experienced their presence. The next day, Jim called me to let me know that a deer had been taken down by a wolf in front of his cabin. 

I discovered Ely, Minnesota watching public television while living and working in North Carolina. I followed Will Steger and Paul Shurke, Ely residents, as they drove dog sleds to the North Pole. In preparation for this amazing feat, the entire town of Ely took part in making it happen. Will’s wife Patti Steger, who owned Steger Mukluks in Ely, designed moose-hide mukluks based on Siberian Native patterns. Since then the boots have been worn by numerous expeditions from the North Pole to the South Pole, and on the Iditarod Race Trail in Alaska. She has made boots for cast members of the Disney movie Antarctica and her boots have also appeared in the movies Iron Will and Grumpy Old Men, and were regularly seen on Northern Exposure.

Susie, Paul’s wife and owner of Wintergreen, designed anoraks and fleece garments, including gloves and hats, that Paul and Will wore to the Pole. When I was attending school there later, I worked with the Shurkes for a while designing trim and merchandising the International Wolf Center’s inaugural store. I also helped feed their sled dogs, which was an achievement in itself, chopping up frozen-solid meat. From my home in North Carolina, I was impressed as I watched an entire town help prepare Steger and Shurke for their incredible trip, and people and students, young and old, from all over the world, watch them via satellite broadcasts overcome life-threatening obstacles and accomplish amazing feats.

I do miss northern Minnesota, the people and maybe even the cold. But because of our intolerance to heat, we landed in another remarkable small community in the north woods of Arizona, and at quite a higher elevation and much colder temperatures than the desert where we started our Arizona adventure. We raised our son here and have been a part of the community for over 28 years. Each year, we get some snow, and the last two years have been better than most. I love grabbing my skis and heading out into the woods and trekking through a winter wonderland of white trees, feeling the peace of winter and the camaraderie of fellow skiers. 

There is an episode in Northern Exposure where the town is waiting for the snow to fly. Its arrival is late and is mentioned occasionally, until in the end, when Maggie O’Connell, a bush pilot on the show, is talking to Joel Fleischman, a misplaced Jewish doctor from New York City (pretty much the basis for the entire show), looks out her window, and sees snowflakes falling. They both walk outside and are under the spell of the first snowfall of winter. They wander downtown, where everyone has come outside, including Chris Stevens, their local radio DJ, and they greet each other with “Bon iver, my friends, bon iver!” which derives in the show from the French phrase for “good winter.” It’s exactly how I feel about winter and all of its beauty and peace.

So, to our friends, neighbors, and visitors in the small communities, the Cicelys, of the White Mountains,

I say, “Bon iver!”