The Cabin!

For those that’ve read my previous blog, this will recount the second day of our hopeful, but eventually failed, writer’s retreated. Thursday morning, @ghostfish and I awoke in our beds at a steeply gouged Comfort Inn on account of the storm. The chains of Duluth hotels are well aware of when weary travelers are stranded in blizzard conditions, and they price accordingly. We collected our bags […all except one as @ghostfish left the room without his paper sack of dry goods], then made our way to Duluth bay. The night before, we saw massive ice chunks floating along and wanted to witness this site in the morning.

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The Duluth harbor was truly something to behold. From the giant lift bridge to the massive ice flows, Northerns Minnesota is as beautiful as it is treacherous. It was already below 0º, so our time admiring the scenery was short before getting back on the road. After a relatively quick supercharge, we began the final leg of the trip to the cabin in Isabella, MN. I stayed here in September of 2020 with @bonni and my family, but never during the Minnesota winter, especially extreme temperatures like the forecast was predicting for the next 30 hours.

This would be the ultimate downfall of our trip, sadly. I remember draftiness through gaps in the walls, doors and windows. In the fall, it was part of the charm in the cabin, but at -4º, it was a brutal precursor to the struggle that lay ahead in staying warm. @ghostfish and I started two fires and plugged in two space heaters while trying to warm our extremities. At one point, using Hot Hands activated warmers […a Minnesota staple] in our boots revealed the visible steam emanating from @ghostfish’s feet in the cold.

Hours passed and we weren’t able to get the cabin above 45º. We began facing a hard decision, knowing that overnight, the temperature was going to drop another 11º. The reality was, that just to maintain 40º throughout the night, one of us would have to be constantly stoking the fire and adding wood. Even at that moment, we were both miserable. There wasn’t much hope of the situation improving and I just asked, “Do you want to just call it?”. Of course, neither of us wanted to. We hadn’t written a single word.

After another hour, still watching our breath cloud before us, defeated by the harsh North of Minnesota, we began packing everything in the Tesla. The trip was an utter fail. On our way out, the care taker approached, asking where we were going. “Home! This fucking sucks, man!”, I said. He seemed surprised, but also stood before us in a long sleeved hoodie, holding a ham sandwich in his barehands. Maybe @ghostfish and I just weren’t cut out for that winter sadism, but the romanticism of a cozy cabin while fleshing out fiction never did materialize.

We made departed, heads hung low but at least confident our long drive back to Minneapolis would be warmer than the alternative. Again, in a blatant kick in the dick, the universe had one final practical joke to play in the face of our frustration. Some 40 minutes outside of Duluth, I suddenly felt cold…again. A theme, it would seem. I asked @ghostfish if he felt cold, and as he held his hand over the dashboard vent, he confirmed it was blowing frigid air. As the frost began forming across the windshield, we hurried, dumbfounded to the next supercharger.

We sat there in Hinckley, paging through YouTube channels that matched the error displayed on the Tesla screen. “Cabin climate control system requires service”. As our fingers, again, grew stiff in the cold, we found a hack that surprisingly worked. We sped towards Minneapolis, eager to cut our losses and put the idea of this get away behind us. I dropped him off at his house feeling guilty for involving a friend in such a calamity, hurried home and spent the next few hours lamenting what could have been. Like a Cohen brothers film, that is our end. Cold, abrupt and a commentary on nature’s indifference to humans.