The Long Winter

Winter drains the color from the world, turns the horizon to a monochrome ranging from pure black to a dusty blue-white. Even the evergreens seem more darkness and shadow than color.

When I lived in Massachusetts I always found January the hardest month to get through. Here in Northern Wisconsin I’d pick February. January nights are still too long to offer any glimpse of hope, and hope is what makes life difficult, because hope is the feeling that things will be better than they are right now. Without hope you remain resigned to now. Hope reminds you that now is not good.

I don’t mind the cold, or even the snow really, but all of it, combined with the darkness, is not my idea of a good time. I understand some people love it, which is great for them. They are welcome to it. I prefer to spend winter on the beaches of Florida, hiking the deserts of Arizona, or perhaps surfing the Pacific coast of Mexico. One of my favorite movies growing up was called Endless Summer. If there’s a movie called Endless Winter, I’ve never seen it.

I’m also not one to force what I love on other people, so here we are. Monochrome winter. Stark white ice racing across the horizon to meet the edge of the great gray-white dome of sky. Stark, dark, sugar coated with snow.

At least there is snow. Last year there was hardly any. The year before there was something like 16 feet. This year we had to wait a long time for any snow, but then there were a few storms that dumped enough for the kids to get out and go sledding and build snowmen and do other wintery things.

If it sounds like I don’t like winter, that’s not quite right. I like snow. I like cold even. I like getting out in it. Unfortunately, aside from a couple nights I spent on the lake shore, I wasn’t able to get out much this winter. We don’t have the clothing or the gear. Nor did we have what I think is the quintessential winter thing to have up here — a fireplace or wood burning stove.

That leaves a kind of monotony of days. Being driven indoors by the cold is hard for people who’ve lived their lives primarily outside for the last 8 years. Still, I think on the whole we had fun. I would call it a successful experiment. We learned. Would I do it again? Not without more preparation and better winter gear. Even then, I’d probably head for the beaches or the desert long before winter was over.