To “hatch” a luminary- is that the scientific name? Well, if there were any qualifying measures, the luminary workshop on Lake of the Isles as seen Sunday afternoon certainly exceeded them. Come to think about it- the Park Nicollet Luminary Loppet, the largest event in the City of Lakes Loppet Cross Country Ski Festival, probably SET the industry standards for luminary making 7 years ago. Candle by candle- the luminaries have grown in size and number every year. Now the trail amounts to a skiable galaxy, with over 1,500 candles illuminating the night.
This past Saturday the group of luminary artists and dedicated volunteers were back on the Lake of the Isles making the magic happen for the 2012 event. Visiting the bustling workshop- one would have witnessed the unusual pairing of equipment as playful as in Dr. Suess fable paired with icy water-proof aprons and power tools made for T.V.’s “Deadliest Catch”.
“It’s just really weird what we’re doing out here,” admitted Luminary co-pilot and long term volunteer Charlie Henke. Fiddling with generators hooked to heat the hot water bath, Charlie has been around to see good, the slushy, the bad, and the frosty when it comes to luminary making. “We make improvements on our system every year, but it is still a learning process. Our system continues to evolve.”
A simple process you think? You be the judge. First you fill over a thousand buckets with water. They are staked and frozen over night and are then harvested, or “hatched” the following day. The buckets of ice are dragged to a hot water bath where they are dunked and released from bondage. They are then flipped onto a table where a volunteer hugs them (and lugs them) to planks that feed to drillers who lock the luminary onto a bed of nails before hollowing out the center out to dispel the liquid core. The water is then dumped directly back into the lake to avoid flooding the work space (cleanliness is a virtue). The luminaries are loaded into sleds and dragged to tarps where they laid side by side…until show time.
Ice is predictable, but fragile. “The luminaries sublime,” explained Henke. That means that they go straight from luminary state to gaseous state. Wind, sun- any weather- will make them deteriorate- literally evaporate.” This makes the art of the Luminary Loppet all the more precarious, a magical blend between art, science and faith.
Each luminary is coddled and handled more than ten times during its short lifecycle. That is a lot of luminary love! So the real question we should be asking ourselves is when does the magic of the Park Nicollet Luminary Loppet really happen? The answer lies somewhere between the first few frozen drops of water- and ends in a glorious evening ski.