A junior reporter on the Duluth News Tribune, I was assigned one holiday season to cover the city’s annual lighting contest. It was a dog of an assignment, but one I came to quite enjoy. It meant compiling the annual list of brightest and best houses, a decades-old tradition in the city. I realized those addresses found their way onto the front seats of limos, senior-center buses and countless family vehicles. I reveled in helping people have a brighter, merrier holiday.
That gave me a glimpse of the satisfaction Marcia must feel from inviting the community to walk through her displays, to sip cider while warming up and to enjoy the glow of another season, of a new friend.
Marcia’s story is incredible; so are the tales told by the many who make her and her yard an every-December tradition – so incredible, they could fill a book. And have. Spirit of the Lights was recently released by this magazine’s publisher. I hope you enjoy these excerpts from my book.
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Up near Hoyt Lakes, amid the mines that produced the ore that created the steel that built the tanks, guns and heavy machinery that won World Wars I and II, a trickle starts deep in the woods: the St. Louis River.
It meanders through Northeastern Minnesota, spilling against weedy banks, frothing around submerged boulders and roaring over drop-offs large and small. The river alternately races and limps toward Duluth-Superior Harbor, the busiest on the Great Lakes, and into Lake Superior, the largest in the world.
All along its journey, the St. Louis River carries silt and sand, the same material that, over hundreds of thousands of years, and perhaps even longer, created the Duluth sandbar known as Minnesota Point. A seven-mile-long freshwater sandbar, it’s the longest on Earth and home to an odd little neighborhood – Park Point.
Just wide enough along most of its length for a two-lane road, two lanes of bike traffic and homes crowded on both sides, Park Point was once a summertime getaway and a place where hay fever sufferers escaped for relief before antihistamines.
Because “the Point” is separated from Duluth’s mainland by a shipping canal, there’s only one way on and off the finger-looking neighborhood – across the Aerial Lift Bridge, not far from Duluth’s downtown. The bridge spans the canal between Duluth-Superior Harbor and Lake Superior, and if a big boat is coming, motorists get “bridged,” meaning forced to wait, as the bridge’s road deck lifts straight up to allow vessels underneath and then lowers so traffic can resume.
Despite the inconvenience, and despite the chilly winds that always seem to be howling in from Lake Superior, the Point has slowly been discovered by the wealthy and elite. Their mansions snuggle into the dunes right alongside the old cottages and the simpler houses of yesteryear, creating an intriguing mix of old and new, past and future, wealthy and not-so-wealthy. Park Point is a neighborhood of contrasts, a neighborhood in transition.
And home to Marcia Hales. Hers isn’t one of Park Point’s mansions. She lives in a modest yet spacious story-and-a-half beach house, its countertops a whitewashed shade of the towering evergreens outside, its tongue-and-groove walls and ceilings the color of the beach sands after they’ve been drenched by a Lake Superior wave. From October to January her house fills with the fragrance of simmering apple cider, its fresh sweetness for evenings of visitors to her glowing yard outside. Mammoth vats hum on the stove in the snack-bar island that marries Marcia’s kitchen to her warm and welcoming sitting area.
Wide, sliding glass doors, as large as one wall, expose the sitting area to the yard, which isn’t much larger than a convenience store parking lot or a Little League baseball infield. In that yard, Marcia has created a spectacle: Her breathtaking holiday lighting display remains tasteful and true despite its growth now to more than 120,000 lights. Visitors are beckoned to not only look at the wildly popular lights but to wander among them, to be a part of them, to allow them to become part of their Christmas traditions. A glowing tunnel begins at the edge of the street, guiding a path past the penguins with tangles of green ribbon decorating each critter’s neck, a lighted igloo and a “Believe” sign in their midst. The path pauses at a wishing penguin before opening to a towering castle outlined by plastic-encased “rope” lights. A 20-foot, star-topped tower of lights – looking like something out of “Cinderella” – reaches toward the inky darkness of the night sky to the left. Beyond the tower, the well-decorated path continues toward the frozen sands of Lake Superior. Waves crash and recede, “poosh-sss, poosh-sss,” giant ice boulders bob and maneuver, “buh-woosh, buh-woosh,” creating a soundtrack of serenity. A campfire crackles at the heart of the display. Long sticks for marshmallows lean against the plastic lounge chairs, waiting. On the opposite edge of the display, lighted bears skate across a frozen pond, the lighted outline of an angel graces towering archways and Marcia’s heated garden house-turned-cider house offers a respite and warmth. Fairies fill the trees, joined by Old Man Winter. The lights are white with accents of green.
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