Excerpt from Snow Report, 2014-2015:

Nordic Trek 

U.P. Ski Gate, End of Winter.

      Midway through Nordic Trek, Expedition 14 we are ready for Marquette.

After the events in the western Upper Peninsula and the Gogebic Range, 
we drive the high side of Lake Gogebic toward Marquette Bay.

      State highway M–28, a rear view mirror and a wish.
Headlights shoot the snow divide,
abreast embankments your wind drag whirls
white and away in dark, rubber tires, black asphalt,
winter roads spin bone ceramic shards in mass,
an exhaustive shell, away and in the wake—
buffalo snow draft.
Rear view mirror, M–28.

      By 7 o’clock p.m. we reach Negaunee, and our first stop is for pasties 
on the corner of 41 and Teal Lake Ave.  Irontown Pasties is Lori Cizek’s best damn pasties
in the whole U.P. pasty pies.  A traditional beef pasty weighs in at 16 ounces: half baked, 
full baked, frozen, by the dozen, with a signature dough crust crimped over a fill mixture 
of lean ground, diced potato, rutabaga, onion and seasoning.  One might venture to say, 
a pasty pie.

      Lori Cizek has invented the mini pasty and the Jalapeno pasty. 
In the very first short minutes of talking with Lori, I gave her the story of 75 pasties 
made for the road to St. Loui, and the shipment of rutabaga that had come in on the midnight
train.  Lori was moved and she swung open the kitchen hatch, and pulled us to the pasty
station.  Within the next minutes we were making ‘em, the pasties, and what followed 
was one of measure and proportions.  Dimitri and your simple rezident narrator were inside
the pasty kitchen.

      Now at this point if you wagered to bet Long Sticks, your wide eyed resolute narrator
for an abled dough-boy you would be sorely disadvantaged, for both index fingers have
suffered slight debilitant injuries stiffening their dexterity over the years.  Always these
deprived index fingers that made rise from oven sheet—hunchback gingerbread men
and kalodia balls with misguided clove.

      But no!  Alas, not this time!  I feel exception coming to play its turn, yes?  
Considering very well this big oven heat wide open and Lori Cizek’s illustrative crimping
methods with the signature crust at hand, yes!  This time I think the right constellations here
have baked up some kairotic ingredients that begin to shine through the way true…yes!

Reject pies we got to keep.  They were all reject pies.

      After walking out of there, we with our sack’o’ pasties, 
and turning right up towards Eagle Mills, toward Marquette, 
Teal Lake laid ice packed and night capped, still you could see teal colour. 
We approach from the interior, up the rising.

                                                                          Karabetsos prose