Who Cooks for You (and Who Calls the Dive)
We’ve had some delightfully deceptive weather the last couple of weeks. The kind that tricks you into believing February in Duluth has turned a benevolent corner. And by “warm” I mean highs in the 20s and 30s. Actual above-zero numbers. The sort of temperatures that make you walk outside without swearing.
For a brief, shining moment, it felt tropical.
Which is precisely when I ended up stuck at home. And later, locked out of the lake.
After the ice diving weekend we had a Monday dive on the Madeira planned. Adam was joining. Forecast: sun and nearly 30°F — practically Caribbean. I woke around 6 a.m. and immediately felt… off. Not dramatically off. Just slightly sideways. I assumed it was due to Sunday’s martini, which I may have mixed with what scientists would call “optimism.” Perhaps slightly extra gin. Perhaps a celebratory splash of red wine afterward. Nothing reckless. Just enough to make Monday morning suspicious.
Then came the mouth sweats.
You know the ones. That sudden tidal wave of saliva your body produces moments before it betrays you. A biological memo that reads: “We regret to inform you…”
It passed quickly. I didn’t actually vomit. I felt vaguely human again. So I blamed the gin, packed my gear, picked up Heather, and we headed up the shore to meet Adam.
On the drive we debriefed the ice weekend. The upside-down photography. The rope handling. The personalities. Diving, like all human group endeavors, requires the ceremonial discussion of “the people.” It was a good crew. Fine. Competent. No one I’m rushing to book a liveaboard with, but for an ice weekend? Entirely serviceable.
We also talked about Jorie and Mike, who worked their tails off to make the weekend run smoothly. I hadn’t met Mike before. Solid guy. Calm, knowledgeable, good at managing groups — a rare talent. I’d dive with him anytime.
Meanwhile my stomach had begun a slow, ominous churn.
By the time we reached the Split Rock visitor center to sign in, I knew. This was not gin. This was biology preparing an uprising.
I decided I wasn’t diving.
The last skill I wanted to practice was “vomiting into a regulator.” And regulator it would be — because vomiting into the loop of a rebreather would be catastrophic. On open circuit you can purge, clear, recover. On a closed circuit? You would, quite literally, be rebreathing your mistake. The loop would be contaminated. The scrubber would be compromised. You’d bail out to open circuit and ascend having just converted your very expensive life-support system into a portable biohazard.
Hard pass.
Adam was already there, his trademark donut tire marks decorating the pristine snow of the parking lot — a ritual apparently required at this site. I announced I was out.
Here’s where something interesting happens in diving.
There is always pressure to dive.
Not malicious pressure. Not overt. But subtle, optimistic, well-meaning pressure.
“You’ll be fine.”
“We’ll keep it shallow.”
“We’ll take it easy.”
All supportive statements. All kind. All dangerous.
Peer pressure in diving doesn’t usually look like teenage dares. It looks like encouragement. It looks like not wanting to ruin the plan. It looks like someone having driven two hours and you not wanting to be “that guy.” It looks like expensive fills, favorable weather, limited access windows, a wreck you’ve been meaning to shoot for months.
And it can absolutely erode judgment.
Diving incidents are often a stack of small compromises. Feeling 80% but diving anyway. Minor equipment issue but manageable. Slight surf but tolerable. Each decision defensible on its own. Together? They build momentum. And once you’re in the water, social pressure increases. Nobody wants to thumb a dive five minutes in. Nobody wants to surface early.
The safest dive buddies are the ones who remove that pressure entirely. The ones who treat “I’m not feeling it” as a complete sentence.
Heather and Adam did exactly that. They asked the obvious and relevant questions, nodded, and moved on. No persuasion. No minimizing. No heroic narratives about powering through adversity. Just quiet acceptance.
That’s gold.
I hauled Heather’s gear down to the water, trying to make my increasingly unstable self useful. I briefly considered hiking up the ridge to look down at the wreck while they were under. Then my stomach gurgled in a tone that made me think a nap in the car would be better.
Adam, meanwhile, was battling the universe. He replaced two O-rings in his SPG spool at the car. Then a DIN O-ring after getting in the water. On his second descent attempt — another leak, likely a hose O-ring.
At some point even the most optimistic diver must concede that Neptune is sending you postcards.
He called it.
Again, no pressure. Heather was immediately fine with it. No sunk-cost arguments. No “we’re already here.” Just: okay.
We spent the next hour chatting in the parking lot, which ordinarily would have been lovely if my gastrointestinal tract hadn’t begun staging a full-scale coup.
By the time we drove home, I was undeniably sick.
What followed was almost certainly norovirus — that microscopic gremlin that turns healthy adults into Victorian invalids in under six hours. Norovirus is astonishingly efficient. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t ease in gradually. It simply declares war on both exits simultaneously.
Between Monday afternoon and Wednesday I covered the eight feet between my bed and the bathroom enough times to qualify for a fitness tracker badge. I lost eight pounds. Eight. In three days. I have not weighed that little since possibly middle school.
Down eight pounds, up one golden retriever. Gus has assumed full nursing duties, specializing in emotional support and aggressive pillow encroachment.
It was miserable in a way that is difficult to dramatize without sounding dramatic. There is a special humiliation in being defeated by something you cannot see. A virus the size of punctuation brought me to my knees.
Occupational health at the hospital wisely suggested I not return to work until 24 hours had passed since my digestive system stopped reenacting The Exorcist. Apparently patients prefer their caregivers not to be actively contagious. Fussy, but fair.
I emerged cautiously by Friday. Ate like a man approaching a skittish wild animal — slowly, respectfully, and prepared to retreat.
Monday rolled around and with it another pleasant forecast. We attempted the Madeira again.
And found it barricaded by a medieval fortress of plate ice.
We drove an hour to discover Lake Superior had installed a wall. No door. No handle. Just several hundred yards of “try again later.”
The cold snap a couple weeks earlier — lows of -29°F, multiple days never breaking zero — had done its work. Lake Superior was reportedly around 40% ice coverage, the most in years. We walked down the path full of hope only to discover the lake sealed shut for several hundred yards.
We tried Gooseberry. Burlington. The Breakwall. Brighton.
All locked.
I was, I admit, deeply disappointed. After weeks of brutal cold when diving felt masochistic, we finally had tolerable air temperatures — and now the lake itself had ghosted us.
On Thursday — a firmly no-diving day, as Lake Superior had sealed itself off like a disgruntled landlord — I went out to refill the bird feeders and found a barred owl perched just beyond the back of the house. Not hunting. Not fussing. Just sitting there with the calm, slightly judgmental composure of a woodland magistrate. Barred owls are large, round-headed creatures with the soulful dark eyes of something that knows exactly where it belongs. They don’t migrate, tend to keep relatively modest territories — often just a few hundred acres — and can live close to a decade or more in the wild if they avoid mishap and overly ambitious photographers.
I spent an hour taking photos while he demonstrated a masterclass in energy conservation. At one point he closed his eyes and appeared to nap, which felt personally insulting given that I had recently spent three days sprinting between bed and bathroom. Later that afternoon he was still there, so I went back out for another thirty minutes while he continued his ambitious program of dignified loafing. Now and then he rotated his head in that unnerving owl fashion — not quite 360 degrees, but enough to make you reconsider your own spinal limitations.
After a bit of reading I learned they often return to the same nesting cavities year after year and defend their territory with that famous “who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” call. Given that I’ve photographed what appears to be this same owl over several winters, I suspect he may indeed be a long-term resident. The thought that he has quietly occupied this small stretch of woods through multiple Duluth winters, ice cycles, and my own dramatic digestive collapse is oddly reassuring. Unlike divers, barred owls experience no peer pressure. If conditions aren’t ideal, they simply sit tight, fluff their feathers, and wait. There is probably a lesson in that.
Eventually, though, the wind did what the wind does. A few days later we drove up and found both the Breakwall and Burlington open. The Breakwall had a sketchy ice shelf at the entry, so Heather — wisely, on a recently sprained ankle — opted for the sandy beach at Burlington.
Water temp: 33°F.
Which sounds alarming but is really just Lake Superior being Lake Superior.
The dive was uneventful. Calm. Cold. Good.
Thirty-three degrees, perfect trim, and not a soul in sight — just Heather and several acres of impeccably groomed underwater corduroy.
On the drive home we talked about how absurdly lucky we are — to have open water in February, and to have someone equally ridiculous to dive it with once or twice a week. Finding a regular February Lake Superior dive buddy is statistically similar to winning a modest lottery.
Heather texted the Duluth Dive Buddy group suggesting a weekend dive. Responses included offers to bring a Solo Stove or a heated ice-fishing tent — which is about as Midwestern as it gets. For most, a February dive is a once-a-year badge of honor. A story. A novelty.
For us, it’s just Tuesday.
And maybe that’s the real gift — not forcing the dive when it doesn’t feel right, not wrestling plate ice when the lake says no, not ignoring the mouth sweats when biology waves a red flag. The barred owl doesn’t migrate when winter arrives. He doesn’t panic when the woods freeze. He simply holds his small territory, rotates his head with quiet suspicion, and waits for conditions to improve.
After norovirus, frozen shorelines, aborted descents, and one very patient owl, slipping beneath open water again felt especially good.
No pressure. No heroics. Just gratitude.
And thankfully — no mouth sweats.