The 2022 Winter Walk Snowflake Hunt has ended. 
At about 9:10 this morning, Heather Bernading and her children discovered the snowflake in Way Park, tied to a memorial tree dedicated to Rebecca Langer, behind the white “rabbit guard” tree trunk protector.
Bernading will claim the prize of $1000 in Chamber Bucks tomorrow night at 6pm at the showmobile stage on Bridge Square during Winter Walk.
the three clues were:
Clue 1:
We start with the fact that Marley was dead
His chains were the price that he paid
Was Marley’s appearance all in his head?
Or was he foretelling where the ornament laid?
Marley warned Scrooge he’d have visitors three
For the next several nights in his home
These spectres would help Scrooge begin to see
Where the ornament was all alone.
Clue 2:
Leading off was the ghost of Christmases Past;
Scrooge recalled memories long gone.
They covered twenty years of his life perhaps
Loves lost and fortunes won.
Clue 3:
Christmas Present arrived with a couple of friends.
Scrooge wondered what he should say.
The sisters gave space to heal and to mend.
Now its a park; a place to play.
The following is an explanation from guest clue writer Jason Michaelson:
2022 Winter Walk Ornament Hunt Clues & Explainations
By Jason Michaelson (Guest Clue Writer 2022)
First off, I’m honored that Tim asked me to write the clues for this hunt. I’ve participated in the Defeat of
Jesse James Days Horseshoe hunt for years, and followed the Winter Walk hunt for almost as long. Far
too often, the holiday season gets really busy to make it down to Northfield to hunt for it. This past fall, in
Babcock Park, the morning the horseshoe was found, Tim asked me where the Horseshoe Hunt falls on
the quality chart of all the hunts I track across the Twin Cities, the state, and even the country. The
Northfield hunts, in my opinion, easily fall in the top three, not because of the prizes (which are nothing to
sneeze at), but because of the care, passion, knowledge, and research that Tim puts into them. His
passion came out as he watched us hunters search for the four mini horseshoes he’d scattered through
the park.
Apart from finding the horseshoe (which has thus far eluded me), my personal first challenge each year is
to figure out what story Tim is trying to tell. There is always a story, and a well thought out story at that.
The Winter Walk Ornament Hunt has been no different. OK it might be a little different in that it has
frequently been a song, but a story of sorts nonetheless.
With that rich history of telling a story, I could hardly do any less with this year’s Ornament hunt. As I am
insufficiently right-brained to write something from scratch, I went through my favorite Christmas stories,
where Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol floats to the top of the list. It is a wonderful story of the
redemption and transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Coincidentally, it takes place over four nights, or at
least that’s how Jacob Marley leads us to believe. The problem I had was that there are really five clues
worth of material to use to work with; the ghosts of Jacob Marley, Christmases Past, Christmas Present,
and Christmas Yet To Come make up the first four staves of the story, and of course Christmas Day as
Scrooge wakes up a transformed man. Yes it was used as source material a few years ago but there is
enough to work with that one could write clues for several years worth of hunts just off of this timeless
tale.
That said, as much as A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption, and has a happy ending, it is a rather
dark story. I had visions of writing a dozen verses worth of clues to spread over the course of four days.
Once the decision was made to use Way Park as the hiding spot, and how it was donated to the city, I
couldn’t keep many of those dark undertones and maintain the respect commanded by such charity, thus
many of those ideas were scrapped. They would have been just a lot of unnecessary fluff anyway, and
once I found the tree in Way Park, so much of that cruft became unnecessary. I didn’t actually need those
sadder points for the story to be complete, and get you to the ornament. As a die hard hunter myself, I
have a habit of trying to read something into each and every word and punctuation mark, and even every
letter in the clue. Certainly not everyone is as engaged as I am; I’d imagine quite the opposite is true, and
it is those not as in to this “sport” for whom I wrote these clues.
I hope that Dickens would approve of the slight license I took with his story to lead you to the 2022 Winter
Walk Ornament. Happy Holidays! Thank you for hunting; I hope you enjoyed it!
Clue the First:
I wanted to combine Jacob Marley’s visit to Scrooge and the visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past into a
single clue, or at least some of the memories from that first visit with the hopes of bringing First Street
directly into the clue. In the end,this wasn’t the easiest of tasks because I wanted to avoid the darkness of
so many of those memories. The easiest part was to use words like “start” in the first verse, and “begin” in
the second”. These were synonyms of sort for the street that is broken by Way Park. On either side of the
park, First Street West ends in a cul de sac.. In fact, the eastern cul de sac is mere steps from the tree in
which the ornament was hidden. On one of my nighttime research visits to the park, I came across this
tree. It stood all alone, still covered in leaves that had yet to fall. Yet “alone” as it stood, it was fully
illuminated by the light from the light pole just across the path.
Clue the Second:
Again the clue starts with “Leading off” yet another subtle “synonym” pointing to First Street. I didn’t want
to be too obvious about the street quite yet. I wanted to keep that one to myself for just a little bit longer.
The ghost of Christmas Past showed Scrooge memories from his past; memories that pointed out
unhappy points in his life and memories that explains to us how Scrooge became a “scrooge”. What
ended up being the single verse second clue was originally intended to be a third verse of the first clue,
with more memories here in the second clue before introducing the Ghost of Christmas Present. Those
memories, as it turns out, were irrelevant to the quest at hand. However, the fact that these were
Scrooge’s memories, points us to the tree in Way Part planted in memory of Rebecca Jane Langer. The
perhaps twenty years, is an allusion to the Northfield Hospital, which sat on the site of the southern half of
Way Park, came down in 2003; the 19 years rounding off to perhaps 20.
Clue the Third:
The Ghost of Christmas Present provided me some timely material to work with for the third clue. In the
story, he presented Scrooge with the siblings “Ignorance” and “Want”, representing the worst of humanity.
Way Park was donated to the city by sisters Lucile and Laura Way, the granddaughters of early Northfield
area homesteader John Way. Their love of the city of Northfield, and gift to the city created the Northfield
Hospital, a place to heal and to mend, on the southern half of Way Park. Their charity was truly the
antithesis of the children shown to Scrooge by the ghost, and for that matter they were the antithesis of
Scrooge himself. This dichotomy is why the Ghost of Christmas Present “arrived” with a couple of friends
(as the clue writer, i like to think they walked there together), rather than concealing them under his cloak
as he did with Ignorance and Want in the Dickens story.
Further, the choice of the word “friends” in the first line suggests that the ornament is in a park that has
not been adopted by an individual, but by a group of people, in this case,the Friends of Way Park.
Clue Finale:
With the ghosts’ visits nearly complete, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows how to get to the
ornament “deep in his heart”. If hunters hadn’t figured out Way Park from clue three, this was the gimme
to get them there. Within the park there are several trees that stand out alone (going back to the first
clue), but this one had a dedication along with it. That dedication plaque says “In memory of Rebecca
Jane Langer who had a life so beautifully lived, and a heart so deeply loved 1988-2018”. The ornament
was concealed on this lone tree, a short walk up the path from the eastern cul de sac on First Street,
tucked in behind the wildlife protection wrap around the tree..
Clues (as posted)
Clue 1:
We start with the fact that Marley was dead
His chains were the price that he paid
Was Marley’s appearance all in his head?
Or was he foretelling where the ornament laid?
Marley warned Scrooge he’d have visitors three
For the next several nights in his home
These spectres would help Scrooge begin to see
Where the ornament was all alone.
Clue 2:
Leading off was the ghost of Christmases Past;
Scrooge recalled memories long gone.
They covered twenty years of his life perhaps
Loves lost and fortunes won.
Clue 3:
Christmas Present arrived with a couple of friends.
Scrooge wondered what he should say.
The sisters gave space to heal and to mend.
Now its a park; a place to play.
Clue 4:
Christmas Future came and showed Scrooge the best
Way to find the prize deep in his heart
They walked in from the East on First Street West
To a tree just inside of Way Park
Their Winter Walk path was roughly north.
They walked toward a Saintly street.
Past a place to stay warm they hiked and went forth
To Rebecca’s memorial tree.
