I woke up early this morning excited to lace up my shoes and run in the crusty snow of my childhood home in Minnesota.  There was plenty of snow on the ground and lots of ice on the streets.  My choice for running was across Lake Minnetonka which has nearly 100 miles of shoreline.  Not that I was going to run 100 miles!

I hit the road at 750 AM and headed directly for Howards Point.  I had to  hop a neighbor’s fence to get on to the lake.  I felt like I had stepped 30 years back into time when the snow crunched under my feet.  The feeling was remarkable.  Snow is supposed to be soft and fluffy.  In Minnesota, it gets so cold that the snow freezes hard.  The snow was nearly virgin on the lake.  I did not see any foot prints or snowmobile tracks.    This made me nervous as I did not want to fall through the ice.  After 20 feet or so I was relieved to not have broke through the ice.

As my feet landed on Enchanted Island, my watch said 9’08″.  What a throw back in time!  The homes were old and very well kept.  It reminded me of the homes on Cape Cod.   With street names Shady Island, Island View, and Enchanted Lane, I knew that I was entering a beautiful place.

It was so silent and still.  One would think that at 8 AM there would be traffic on the road.   Silence.  The last time that I ran on this island was 1987.  I did not remember all the roads.  Getting lost was going to be the only way to figure out the island.  Lost I was!  The streets were so narrow and winding that many times I ended up back where I started.  This added to the excitement.  If I was seriously lost, all I had to do was run for the lake and look for water towers.  I could at least tell the direction for home.

The traffic started to pick up at 9 AM.  I was longing for the silence.  The lake was buzzing with snowmobiles.  Who was I to complain about the noise?  I was wishing that it was me on a snowmobile doing 100 mph across Lake Minnetonka!

At 930 AM, I ran out to the lake for the trip home.  My foot prints were filled in with drifting snow.  Car and snowmobile tracks zig and zagged across the lake.  What happened to my virgin snow?

I told my dear nervous mother that I would be back in 2 hours.  I was home in 2:02′