He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. — John Burroughs

I’ve been circling artificial intelligence for a while now, like it’s a dangerous wounded animal. When AI results first showed up for my Google searches, they were pretty bad. But I’ve got to admit, the responses to my esoteric search queries (like “Literary quotes about Minnesota winters”) have gotten better lately. I guess the beast is learning.

Some high school students recently asked me if I used AI in my writing. I told them that I don’t, and that I can tell when blog posts are created with AI because the writing is generic. However, I admitted that I have considered using AI to generate ideas.

Today, I took the plunge on the idea front because I didn’t have a good winter quote already in my head. I typed in that search term above about Minnesota winters. This came back: While there might not be a specific literary quote explicitly mentioning “Minnesota winter,” quotes that capture the essence of a harsh, snowy, and solitary winter landscape could be applied to a Minnesota winter experience.

In the spirit of full disclosure, one of the quotes from my search is at the beginning of this post. Maybe AI isn’t so bad? And while I’m disclosing everything right now, I might as well say that my photo editing software uses AI to enhance images. I used it on the images that accompany this post, except for the bottom one. The photography teacher who introduced me to this software said that cameras can’t capture everything our eyes see. The editing software brings the photos closer to that ideal. I admit to loving the subtle changes the software makes to the original image. I’m not going to disclose what that software is here, however. I need to keep some secrets to myself. 😊

But I don’t want this post to be about AI. I want it to be about winter. I took these photos at our cabin, which is on a small lake in northern Minnesota. The sun was setting as Russ and I cooked dinner. As with this summer sunset from a few years ago, I had to neglect cooking duties to run outside and capture the light before it disappeared. Luckily, earlier in the day we’d gone snowshoeing and had packed a path down to the lake through the deep snow. I was able to pop on my Sorrels and jog through the cold to the frozen lakeshore with ease.

As I snapped a few photos, I marveled at the still, white landscape and the way the sun tinged the small ridges of snow collected on the lake a dull orange. My camera couldn’t capture those ridge colors very well, but AI helped bring them out a bit.

Normally, we’d be travelling somewhere beachy and warm this time of year to soak up the sun and Vitamin D. We decided not to do that this winter because I am . . . drumroll . . . retiring this spring. I only have two-and-a-half weeks of workdays left! I have too many projects to wrap up before then for a vacation. We are saving our beachy-warm trip for this May.

It’s been good, so far, to stick out the winter here this year. We’ve ridden the temperature swings, complained with our neighbors about the cold, shoveled roughly a ton of snow off our cabin deck, and gotten out cross-country skiing for the first time since the winter of 2022-23. (The snow conditions were too poor after that.) Besides, if we travelled to where the temperature is eighty degrees, we’d have to worry about sunburning our Minnesota-white skin, and then reacclimatizing once we got off the plane. I have not-so-fond memories of walking to our car in the Minneapolis airport parking lot without winter coats or gloves in minus-ten-below temps, since we left our winter outerwear in the car.

To sum it all up: I’m enjoying winter in Minnesota, and I’ve prodded the AI beast. Maybe it’s friendly?