The Winterer's Festival

The North House Folk School Winterer’s Festival is part community gathering, part craft workshop extravaganza, part film festival. I have been volunteering throughout, meeting a lot of people and having some time to just enjoy.

sun setting over newly frozen lake surface

The workshops come in two flavors, classes in which people make something or learn something in depth and short seminars. So, there will be some people leaving the school today with their own handmade snowshoes, mukluks, toboggans or slippers. Pretty impressive! I have been able to see some of the seminars including a winter arctic snowshoe trek slideshow and winter camping for under $200 (making your own stove, sewing your own tent).

winter camping seminar

The film festival is arctic themed so that these Minnesotans can see how things are even further up north! I saw a documentary about an Icelandic band that made it big, “Sigor Ros – Heima,” and a narrative documentary about a Mongolian family who had to go to great lengths to get one of the camels in their herd to accept her new colt, “The Story of the Weeping Camel.” The yurts in this movie were absolutely phenomenal. In “Sigor Ros – Heima” the part that blew my mind was seeing the creation of an artist who lived in Iceland, I think near the band members’ hometown. It was a chromatic marimba made of shards of rock he picked up from a scree pile near his home. Check it out on You Tube. Today, I am going to see “Artic Dreamer: The Lonely Quest of Vilhjalmur Stefansson”

For me, the community events have been the best part of the fest. There is a winter camping area where people have pitched tents on the North House grounds. They are staying there for the whole fest, and I have really enjoyed checking out the little tent town.

looking back on the tent town from the dock


yurts in the tent town

On Friday, there was a contra dance with live music! I got to dance, dance, dance away! There were a lot of people there, and it seemed like everyone was having a super time, even the high schoolers. Yesterday was The Deep Freeze Chili Feed, which was basically a big chili dinner. I especially liked this because a big part of my volunteering has been making cornbread and chili, so I felt a bit like a hostess. cornbread making party

Plus, the chili was yummy, and I had popcorn to put on mine! The school was packed, and we even ran out of food. That was kind of unbelievable since it was cooked in a huge cauldron, an actual, real-life cauldron.

So much fun! The time is going by quickly, and I can't believe I only have a few days left here.