Together We Can Build...

Merlin: On another wintery, snowy day, we stayed close to home because of sickness (mine) and compassion (Rebecca's). Home, right now, is the shore of lake Aluksne, a couple kilometers outside of town. There is nobody around - the guesthouse people show up once a day to microwave breakfast for us - and we were getting a little lonely and cabin-crazy.

Rebecca: To make matters worse (?) I had "Winter Wonderland" stuck in my head. This has been the case for days, actually. It's proved to be useful because 1) I finally realized that my original interpretation of the lyrics, in which the snowman is hitting on the person who built him (a story for another day), was incorrect and 2) Merlin was prompted to suggest the following: "Do you think if we actually build a snowman you'll stop singing about it?"
Merlin: To give you an idea of how isolated we are, distant ice-fisherman have become our best buddies. This is about as close to them as we've gotten, because we don't want to scare the fish and falling through ice scares me. Also, I'm not sure what I would say if I did walk up to one of them.
Rebecca: Merlin was a little skeptical that it could work. The snow was fluffy and cold, not ideal for manbuilding. When I went upstairs to get gloves and looked out the window, I could see he was making excellent progress.

Merlin: I was skeptical, and my back isn't all that thankful for the extended bending and rolling. The going was painfully slow, but it was a satisfying process. There were setbacks, of course, and I wasn't as happy then as I am now, but it was worth it. Also, Rebecca was much quicker with the torso and the facial accoutrements than I was with the base and head, probably because she believed.
Merlin: Rebecca's hat, cattail stubs for eyes, a piece of detritus for the mouth, a bit of dry grass for the mustache... he's almost too human!

Rebecca: The snow Merlin stuck on to keep the moustache in place definitely resembled a nose. Eerily unintentional. We named the "Parson Brown" we had built "Lang Brown" (wink wink nudge nudge New Schoolers).
Merlin: We are now inside, sipping Bonaparte Brandy, a delicious Latvian spirit, and wishing that Lang could come join us. I do have to keep reminding Rebecca, though, that snowpeople don't like "warming up."

Rebecca: I hope tomorrow morning, the fisherman is super jealous of our new friend. We think that some suspect smelt from the local store was responsible for Merlin's sickness. Maybe that was fisherman's secret gift to us - leading us to build Lang. Our friends are the best.

(Merlin: p.s. The smelt only affected me because we realized that it was mixed up with pork lard. It felt pretty normal for me, this being Latvia, but deterred Rebecca from eating it.)