A Snow Day at Starved Rock

I haven’t been to Starved Rock for the holidays for two years. I’m there now, sitting by the fireplace in the Great Hall, writing. There are children running around, and there’s enough snow outside that we’re in a winter storm warning. A promising start to Christmas.

Starved Rock is a state park in LaSalle County, IL, near where I grew up. Full of sandstone bluffs and trees, it is one of the best places to see fall color in the US and is picturesque in the winter. It can get horrendously busy at Memorial Day and Fourth of July, so I would not recommend going at those times. Come in the fall or winter, although if you want to stay at the lodge, reserve early.

Nearby Utica is a cute, tiny tourist town worth visiting and Ottawa is a college town without a college. We’re close enough to Chicago to get their tourists, which builds the local economy, but far enough away that the area is still uncrowded.

Today I don’t think we’ll go out in the snow. I may write here; I will sit by the Great Hall fireplace and possibly build a fire at our cabin. There’s a hot tub I might go in later, and maybe I’ll take a nap. I may be in the best place in the world for a snow day.

My semester is over! Now what to do?

I’m on break and I already don’t know what to do with myself.

I’m too bored to surf and not motivated enough to write. Or do anything that uses my brain.

This will definitely not do.

What I’d really like to do is spend a day or two at a spa. As I’m 120 miles from a spa, that is not happening.

So I’m probably going to go to the cafe and see how much I can get written on Kami today.

Winter’s Nap

I would just as soon sleep all winter.

I would have made a fine early agrarian — farm manically all summer, hibernate all winter. In a cave wouldn’t be bad as long as it was warm and comfortable — ok, fine, I’d have a hay mattress on the floor, infested by fleas and lice. I guess I’ll stop my romanticizing here.

It’s hard for me to get out of bed in the winter. My husband’s laughing at this because I’m always up and out of bed before he is, at 5:00 AM every morning. Honestly, though, it’s HARD to get out of bed. I keep hoping to be snowed out of work even though they shoveled all the snow from Sunday’s blizzard.

The world is no longer that simple as to follow the rhythms of the year. Academia, my home, follows a rhythm, which is why I love it. But winter is still worktime, and I fight the need to be cozy every day to go to work.

Christmas break will be here in two and a half weeks; I think I’ll make it till then.