Legs and all

The heatwave is in effect and has been televised.

Lately I have been waxing nostalgic on what I would do to beat the heat when I lived in Minnesota. Where it is not just hot, but humid as fuck.

I grew up on the Iron Range, best exemplified in North Country (When that movie came out, "they" said that Charlize Theron was too pretty to play an Iron Range girl. Take it from me we aren't just a bunch of homely girls, "they")

I digress.

Dead mining towns scatter that area, including a couple of flooded ones that my friends and I would frequent when it was too hot and humid. We used to climb up the side of the mining crater, jump from great heights and do that over and over again until our arms no longer functioned. (Which if they stopped you were s.o.l. because the only thing waiting for you was 100 feet of more water.)

I remember when danger wasn't anything we ever thought about, when the only thing hopefully keeping us from dying was crossing our fingers when we jumped. Always a cautious girl I kept myself from jumping the 100' foot cliff because you always had to play your cards right because if you didn't get your timing you would trip over the exposed root and surely plummet 200 feet to your drowning death.

The only rule I remember is to keep your arms in, because leaving them out would leave you an intricate patch work of gorgeous purply bruises and the pain made it hard to swim for your life.

There is really nothing more beautiful than the color that leaching iron ore makes in water.