West metro has ice, but not the fire of carnival

The Winter Carnival ("Dress Warm, or Die") is coming to a conclusion soon, and our family will miss the Torchlight Parade. It's a tradition with us. Every year we stay indoors, wear nothing on our head and thin socks on our feet, and don't stand outside.

If you remember a few years back, the carnival had problems keeping ice sculptures intact; everything melted and slumped, and when a dusting of snow fell it looked like a platoon of Pillsbury Doughboys had lost a great battle. I don't think they had an ice palace that year -- good thing, since the boom was on and someone would have sold it for $650,000, flipped it for $900,000 and then defaulted when it melted and the mortgage was literally underwater.

Do not take this as criticism of the Winter Carnival. It is a fine tradition with rich lore, even if the Vulcans are no longer mischievous merry-makers daubing soot on the snowy cheeks of the town's maidens and carrying lit cigars into interior spaces. You side with the King, or you side with the Vulcans; you're either happy to see the reign of winter approach its zenith in all its bright hard glory, or you side with the devils who chase him away. The Aquatennial has no such tale, and it's the poorer for it. Oh, Minneapolis has the Queen of the Lakes, the Princess of the Ponds, the Duchess of the Low Depression That Collects Water and Breeds Mosquitoes, but we have no overarching mythological narrative. And we have no Medallion Hunt.

The medallion was finally found on Wednesday, by the way. News reached us over here in the western metro, where people who never get past Snelling regard such events as they would a tribal rite of rainforest dwellers who bring down dinner with blow-darts. But really, it's a great idea: Trickle out a series of obtuse quatrains and let the locals decipher the clues to find a puck worth 10 grand. Why can't Minneapolis do that?

Not by shores of Gitcheegumee

In the land of sky-blue waters

With a rake but not a broom, he

And they're off to the zoo! Wait, we don't have a zoo. Well, wait for the next clue.

Denny Hecker pickled Petters

Lo, the dog sneezed

Paint a brick like a rainbow

Seasoned Minneapolitans would be perplexed: Obviously, that means the stump where there used to be a great forked tree trunk on the east side of Lake of the Isles in the late '80s. Too blatant for a second clue. Has to be something else. Wait for the next clue. Hey, it's in Haiku form:

Tyrone would have liked it, no?

Time for Lear again

Okay, that's the Guthrie. Let's go dig up the Guthrie! On and on it would go, until eventually we ran Clue No. 23:

In the hand of the statue

of Mary Tyler Bleepin' Moore

Morons

No, it would be wrong. Besides, Minneapolis is perfectly willing to cede the whole "winter" thing to St. Paul, and keep its own image as a place where water primarily assumes a fluid state. There are probably newcomers who think the seasons change somewhere along the Midway, and St. Paul is locked in a deep sheath of perpetual winter. But it's easy to celebrate summer; it takes hardy souls to show up to watch Boreas pass, when his cruel fist grips us tight. Of course the crowds lined the street when they carted Louis XVI off to the guillotine, too. You can have your Groundhog Day: The mere fact that there are Vulcans about means winter is weary and brittle, ripe for deposing. Maybe we will go to the parade. After all, it's not the cold we cheer. It's the light. It's the fire.