December 2025 – Birch Lake Yacht Club

*Stars reflecting on the lake, November 23, 2025*
Photo credit to Patricia Zoller

A Michigan Winter Thing

By Sharon Bippus, originally published at SharonBippus.com

I’ve got a thing for winter. And that’s good considering that I live in Michigan and we’ve recently had a lot of snow, cold, and ice. Sometimes I meet people who talk about how much they hate winter. I always wonder why they live in Michigan, where you might as well embrace the possibility of dense snow, freezing rain, or subzero wind chill.

Of course, I’m biased, having been a school teacher for quite a number of years. Snow days always kept me off the road during inclement weather. My early teaching years were spent in Chicago, where snow days were a real rarity. But in Michigan, snow days are a reality and a certain bonus for most teachers, especially when the call comes the night before or early that morning. It’s not so exciting to find out when you’re already in the shower. I found out recently that this late call stuff happens to kids too, and is also a bit of a let-down.

When I was a kid we didn’t have cell phones or weather apps. We had maybe four television channels and if bad weather was coming, a map of Michigan would show up in the corner of the TV screen, usually with the areas affected in white or blue That’s how we knew something was about to happen. We watched TV from the time we got home from school until we went to bed, because face it, other than reading a book, or playing a board game with your siblings, that was often all there was to do. On bad weather mornings, if our parents woke us up, we could always watch the school and other closings on a ribbon that ran on the bottom of our television screen. It was in alphabetical order by town, so if you missed your school, you had to wait for the ribbon to scroll back around. This isn’t the last time I’m going to write about the good old days, so be prepared… (We also wore bread bags in our boots to keep our feet dry, but never had to walk three miles to school in three feet of snow, like our parents boasted.)

In my classroom we used a weather app to do all kinds of math and science related activities. How much snow was predicted? How much did we get? What was the total accumulation? Students were always excited for heavy snow: to get a day off, to maybe mess around in the excitement of shoveling a sidewalk, building a snowman or a fort, sledding down a hill, or having a snow ball fight.

Snow is just pretty. Who hasn’t looked out a window or even gone outside to marvel at the white stuff coming down? Winter in the Midwest can be a sad place without snow: bare trees, cloudy days, sometimes mud, no color, just mostly brown. But a sunny day with snow just brightens up a person’s mood.

When people talk about blizzards or snowmageddons of the past they usual express excitement and a sort of pride for having lived through it. Anybody from Michigan who is over 55 or so can probably tell you about the Blizzard of ’78 with a smile and glee. That year most of Michigan got about 30 inches of snow in about 24 hours. Roads were impassable despite many a man heading out to the store to buy milk or get to work or some other folly. Stories of the snow coming half way up a front door or of people being stuck at home for days abound. I remember that my dad got stuck in the snow coming home from bowling and left his bowling ball in the car. A neighbor came on his snowmobile to get his bowling ball out, thinking that thing might freeze in the cold.

Recently I talked to a California transplant about Michigan winters and warned him about the white out in a neighboring town. Anybody from around here knows that there’s a part of the highway heading north that isn’t bordered by trees or buildings, but by flat fields. When the snow comes there’s nothing to block it, and the wind creates about four miles or so of terrible blowing and drifting snow, in other words, a white-out. If you are a local you know which roads to avoid and which to take during the winter months. I think we own that knowledge, that connection with the land, with history. Just like we own the stories of the Blizzard of 78 or any other bad winter or period of power outage or being stuck in a snow drift and pulled out by a neighbor. That’s Michigan in winter, and that’s a part of us.

Commodore’s Comments

I hope that everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! Now that Christmas is rapidly approaching, preparations are underway. In recent years, Black Friday discounts may have helped some of us men, such as yours truly, to at least try to start to break old habits of waiting until the last minute to do Christmas shopping. This year I’m pleased to report that some slight progress has been made. Wishing everyone a wonderful and blessed Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

In the meantime, I hope that a few more photos and videos from beautiful Southern Africa will help you stay warm.

Video: Mother cheetah runs, her cub follows. Okavango, Delta, Botswana.

Video: Male lion, eating a Cape buffalo. Chobe National Park, Botswana.

(Click on each image below to enlarge)

This rescued elephant near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe is friendly and tame, and loves peanuts.

Fleet Captain’s Corner

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and didn’t gain too much weight. I am thankful for being a part of the wonderful Birch Lake community. As I write this article, 8 inches of snow is in the forecast, so winter is here, and there is not much sailing at the moment. Crossing my fingers for some good ice this year so we can get the ice sailboat out on the lake again.

Several months ago, I ran across an interesting video on YouTube that explains how early 16th-century explorers’ sailing ships, such as the Mayflower, were constructed and worked. Many early ships that made the voyage from Europe to America, like the Mayflower, were only around or under 100 feet long. In fact, on Columbus’s first voyage, he brought around 90 people on three ships, the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria, which were estimated to be only 50 to 70 feet from bow to stern. The Mayflower, with 80 to 90 ft of deck space, carried 102 passengers, with about 30 surviving the trip.

Sure, makes me thankful to be living in modern times. It is a bit longer video, but if anyone is interested in how the early transatlantic ships were built, see the attached video. There is other interesting information that teaches how some of the nautical terms were derived.

~ F.C. Bob Niezgodski

Events

Christmas Crawl is Back!

Mark your calendars for Saturday, December 13^th for the mostly annual Christmas Crawl. The fun begins with appetizers at Holly and Scott Troeger’s house at 5:00. Next, dinner at Blair and Bernie Garceau’s house at 6:00, followed by dessert at Sandy and Bob Baucus’s house at 7:00. Please reach out to any of the host houses if you can help or provide food for any of the food venues. We hope you can join us for all or even part of this Birch Lake tradition.

Christmas at the Bonine House

2026 BLYC Calendar

Click here to add the BLYC calendar of events to your Google Calendar. The calendar will be updated if events change.

December 13, 2025 – Christmas Crawl (see details above)
May 16, 2026 – Spring Dinner at Hotel Elkhart, 5pm
May 23 – BLYC Board Meeting
May 23-24 – Memorial Day Regatta
May 30 – Commodore / Vice Commodore Party + Stock the Bar
June 6 – Trivia Night
June 13 – Spaghetti Dinner
June 20 – BLYC Board Meeting
June 27 – Bingo Night
July 3 – Port-a-Pit Fundraiser
July 4 – Boat Parade
July 4 – Fireworks
July 4-5 – Fourth of July Regatta
July 5 – Pancake Breakfast
July 15 – Card / Game Night
July 18 – BLYC Board Meeting
July 18 – Big Outdoor Daytime Screen
July 24 – Ladies’ Golf Outing
July 25 – Poker Run
July 31 – Men’s Golf Outing
August 1 – Corn & Sausage Roast
August 6 – Men’s & Women’s Golf at Orchard Hill Country Club
August 8 – Kidz Regatta
August 15 – BLYC Board Meeting
August 15 – Homeowner’s Association Annual Meeting
August 19 – Card / Game Night
August 22 – Fall Dinner
August 26 – Women’s Style Show
August 29 – Pet / Pooch Parade
September 5-6 – Labor Day Regatta
September 12 – Sailing Awards
September 19 – BLYC Board Meeting
September 26 – Bad Patty Crockpot Challenge

Board meetings take place at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings at the Yacht Club, and are open to all lake residents.

Public Service Announcements

Turtle Signs

It’s time to stow away your “slow down” signs for the winter! Don’t forget to take them in so they don’t get destroyed by the snow plows this winter.

Update Your Email Preferences

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BLYC Directory

Corrections and updates to the new directory? Send any updates to birchbarker1@gmail.com and we’ll publish them here for folks to update their directories.