'It is our identity, for better or worse': Author and podcaster T.D. Mischke on Minnesota's defining season

CATHY WURZER: The forecast is perfect for this next conversation. The Twin Cities will see its first one inch snowfall tonight with more snow tomorrow morning. Which means Tuesday's commute could be a mess. With timid drivers relearning how to navigate slippery roads, the drive made potentially worse by the foolhardy who smugly zoom by in their four-wheel drive only to hit a patch of ice, which leads to a dramatic spin out into the median or ditch.

Winter is coming, friends, which for some sparks joy, others dread. Author, podcaster, and radio show host, T.D. Mischke, celebrates the season in his new book Winter's Song: A Hymn to the North. There's a release party and book signing tonight at The Dubliner Pub in St. Paul, which is perfect, Tommy, for a party talking about winter on a cold night. It's so nice to have you in my studio.

T.D. MISCHKE: It's lovely to be here. I just was driving through downtown St. Paul coming here on this beautiful, sunny day. And I just said, "Boy, I love my city." It just feels great. I realize it's going to be white in a number of hours, but it's glorious out there.

I actually love the cold. The cool out there is so refreshing. And the book is about the joy of the cold.

CATHY WURZER: Well, you call winter another world, which is true. A season that cannot be ignored. I love that, by the way. And we're just on the cusp of it. And you write about how Northerners Minnesotans, Wisconsinites, Michiganders, that kind of thing, intrinsically feel it. How are you feeling it right now?

T.D. MISCHKE: I have a thrill right now that I have, a sense inside me that feels like I'm 5-years-old because I can feel it coming. And when it's new every year, when it's new, there is this sensation that never changes. Even though we go through year after year of winter, there's this amnesia that sets in, a seasonal amnesia.

And it's all brand new again every year for me. Now, I'm obviously I'm the joyful side. There are those who are on the depressed side. And I don't know what that vibration is all about that they're feeling. But I feel just a thrill right now.

CATHY WURZER: See, I love the first snowfall. It's always so beautiful. And then it gets old really quick. I don't know, that's just me maybe.

T.D. MISCHKE: Well, how quick?

CATHY WURZER: Pretty quick soon after. I got to be honest. I know. I know. And I'm a native, like you are.

T.D. MISCHKE: Because I write a chapter about the lessons of March. And how March is generally when everyone feels it's gone on too long, but it's a lovely thing to have to wade through a month where it forces you to reckon with what you can't change and then watch it amp up the joy of spring.

Our springs, in fact, I'll argue our springs and summers are born out of our winters. Their thrill, their joy, their wonder is as much for what they're not as for what they are. Winter dominates the calendar so much in the North.

CATHY WURZER: Oh gosh, yes.

T.D. MISCHKE: That when we don't have winter, we don't realize how much of our pleasure is for what we're not experiencing. And that's why I argue the spring in the North is another thing altogether from spring anywhere else in the country. It has to be.

CATHY WURZER: I love how you who say we live through winters up here, many of us for our entire lives, we are a different breed. If you read the book, that's very clear that we are a different breed of human.

T.D. MISCHKE: Yeah. The point I try to make in the book is there's this intimate connection between the season and the people of the North. And it separates us from everyone else.

I've been traveling the country for my podcast for the last 10 years. I mentioned where I'm from. It's the first thing anyone wants to talk about is the cold. It is our identity, for better or worse. And in my view, for better.

CATHY WURZER: Say we have a clip from the podcast. We got to play this, right? OK. Now this is-- The Mischke Road Show, by the way, has had more than, what, 100 episodes? Is that right?

T.D. MISCHKE: Yeah, about 164.

CATHY WURZER: What the heck. You've been all over the place. OK. So I'm going to play this clip because it's actually quite appropriate to our conversation.

T.D. MISCHKE: We are the great souls of the North, we Minnesotans. Shaped, formed, altered by our environment. Our personalities crystallized by the cold. You cannot take the cold from us. It is in us. But in blustery glory, in windswept wonder, not in callousness or icy detachment.

We are not children of winters steely glare. We are held by its enthusiastic embrace, taught by its poetic whispers. Winter gave birth to a part of who we are.

CATHY WURZER: Geez, I love listening to your voice, by the way.

T.D. MISCHKE: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. Do you have a-- now, I grew up in South Minneapolis right across the Lake Street Bridge. So we'd go over to Town and Country and go sledding. Now, I know you're from St. Paul.

T.D. MISCHKE: Yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Where did you go sledding?

T.D. MISCHKE: Well, Town and Country was one of them too. Yeah. And Highland Hills.

CATHY WURZER: All right.

T.D. MISCHKE: And anywhere. When you're little, the tiniest hill in your neighborhood works just fine. And you keep trying to find that bigger and bigger hill. Until, well, frankly, you're going off garage roofs, in my case.

CATHY WURZER: Yes, you did. Yes, you did as a kid. My brother did that too. Folks, and you mentioned this in the book, folks who are not from here, when they experienced their first winter either they just go, "Oh my God, this is amazing" or they just freak out.

T.D. MISCHKE: I spent a chapter on people who moved here from tropical places as adults. None of us who grew up here can know what our first winter was like. We can't remember it.

But imagine seeing it for the first time as an adult. And it was a combination-- I either met wonder and almost-- they viewed it almost as a sacred thing. They just were in awe of it, in utter awe. Mostly of things we don't think about much.

The silence. The number of people who come from tropical places and talk about the silence of winter. Something they've never known before. They write back home about the silence, the stillness after a snowfall. It's magical.

And then there's those who fall right away, hurt themselves. And my favorite is the guy who said when he saw the first snowfall, "This is going to be an environmental disaster. None of these trees will make it. And I cannot live where there are not trees."

CATHY WURZER: Oh my God. Yes. I read that and I thought, oh my goodness. But they come back. I mean, that's the beautiful thing.

T.D. MISCHKE: He had to be convinced in the spring it would all come back.

CATHY WURZER: See, by the way, love the picture of the guys-- this is, of course, from Minnesota Historical Society. It's an old photograph. It must be from the '30s or early '40s. And these gentlemen are trying to push a car out of a snow bank. And they look almost happy about it.

Now there is an art to getting out of a snow bank. An art that I would argue with you, Tommy, has been lost. Because right away, people, they spin out. They get into a ditch or a snow bank. And they call a tow truck right away. No one knows what to do.

T.D. MISCHKE: But we want them to get stuck. And here's why we want them to get stuck. Because our job in the winter as Northerners is to feel that wonderful sense of satisfaction of pushing someone when they're stuck out of a snow bank, out of someplace in the road where they can't get out.

That is. That's a badge. That's a Northerners touchstone. That's what we do. The first time you do it, it's like a baptism. And pretty soon it's a well-rehearsed play. And eventually, it's how you tether yourself to where you're from. I don't ever want to lose that. Please, don't make cars that can't get stuck.

CATHY WURZER: I also love the fact-- and I think for me too, and I think being in radio we're both kind of introverts, if I may say that.

T.D. MISCHKE: You are correct.

CATHY WURZER: Yes. So I do my best work in the winter. And I was happy to see that Bob Seger also does his best work in the winter too when he writes most of his songs in the winter. And I'm betting you probably do most of your writing in the winter.

T.D. MISCHKE: Yes. And I did a whole chapter talking to artists who all talk about how productive winter is. Winter is a season born, made for artists. It truly is.

One writer had this wonderful sense of looking out the window and seeing the snow as the blank page. And in his imagination had to fill in. Instead of seeing the flowers and the lush green, it was his imagination that had to come to life. And that's a wonderful way of looking at an artist working in winter.

CATHY WURZER: Did you-- obviously you had to write this book in the winter, it took you a couple of winters, obviously. How was that process for you?

T.D. MISCHKE: It was such a joy to get up each day and to have this relationship with the season where I'm going to partner with you here. We're going to try to talk about who you are to people who may come to this area from some other place in the world and not understand you. Or to reintroduce you to people who have gotten a bit lost in their relationship.

I think a lot of us the relationship has gotten stale. And I wanted to refresh that sense of the wonder and the awe. And yes, the challenge. But how much we're meant to butt up against things in life. And how that works in our favor ultimately.

CATHY WURZER: See, I have to refresh myself when it comes to winter. I'm going to be one of those that admit I like that first snowfall, as I told you. And then it gets old for me because I think I have to deal with this. Now, do you look askance at snow birds?

T.D. MISCHKE: Well, when I was a kid all of us made fun of them. Oh, we made fun of them. We just felt so much in awe of the older women who stuck around and wouldn't let us shovel for them. They'd be out there with the gray hair under their knit caps and shoveling, muscling the snow away.

And all these well-to-do younger businessmen heading to Florida. And we wanted these older women on our state flag. That's who we are. I don't mind anybody checking out for a couple of weeks. But I think it's a real loss to come to winter and say, "I'll see you guys in the spring."

You are losing out. This is a season that's here to do things for us that no other season can. There's a whole chapter where I talk about people who I call it winter's disciples. They only want winter. They're unhappy in the spring and summer.

And to hear them talk about why winter serves them, you can take a little of that. And they're not people who go snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing. They're people who revel in the way winter brings them inside themselves, changes their emotional state, makes them think about life differently. Spiritually, it has an effect on people in powerful ways.

CATHY WURZER: Slows you down.

T.D. MISCHKE: Everyone talked who loved it talked about slowing down time.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah. I would agree with that, which is something I got to work on.

T.D. MISCHKE: And the older you get, the more you feel that time flying by and the gift of it being slowed down is a true gift.

CATHY WURZER: Tommy, I'm telling you, I feel so much better now about winter now that you've talked to me. Thank you. If a person gets a copy of the book, they can live it while reading it in the coming months.

T.D. MISCHKE: Yes.

CATHY WURZER: What a gift.

T.D. MISCHKE: Yeah. And the book kind of starts with the end of Halloween. So the timing is perfect. I start out the book feeling that vibrational shift the day after Halloween, the steely March. Here comes that relative we know so well.

CATHY WURZER: Well, it's coming tonight.

T.D. MISCHKE: Tonight.

CATHY WURZER: So yeah, I wish you well. T.D. Mischke, I'm fangirling right now. Thank you for being in my studio.

T.D. MISCHKE: It was a joy. Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Tommy Mischke is a podcaster, author of Winter Song: A Hymn to the North. You can meet him tonight at his book release party from 6:00 to 10:00 PM at The Dubliner. I'll get that word out, Dubliner Pub, in St. Paul.