Northern Seasons Outdoor Services

About Northern Seasons Outdoor Services

Three in the morning, January, the wind coming down off West Grand Traverse Bay with an armful of lake snow it has been carrying since Wisconsin — that is Northern Seasons Outdoor Services' shift. The bay does not make ordinary snow; it makes the kind that stacks a foot on a driveway between supper and sunrise and leaves a hard ridge at the end of the apron. So the plow goes out while the township is still dark and works its way through, driveway by driveway, lot by lot, shovel finishing what the blade cannot reach. The reward is small and enormous at once: somebody steps outside at six-thirty, coffee in hand, and finds the way already open. Winter is the whole job here, and it gets the whole attention.