Don’t Give Winter the Cold Shoulder
On noticing the small beauties of the winter months
There’s something so difficult about January. Even when snow comes, it doesn’t feel as magical as it did in December.
Just today, as snow filled my campus with a beautiful blanket of fresh powder, I felt that wonder that comes with snow. It was falling so fast, and the snow seemed to pile up on the ground. I love the way snow coats trees up to their last branch, making everything, even the sky, seem shrouded in magic.
Then the snow turned to rain and the scene quickly turned slushy. It’s amazing how quickly beauty can be taken away.
I’ve been trying for years to enjoy the latter part of winter. There was one year when snow was abundant and stuck around, and I felt grounded in wintertime. I looked out the kitchen window at my backyard, transformed by the weather. Some days, my mom and I observed the animals passing by our home by looking at the tracks in the snow.
One night, she heard a weird sound against the side of the house — a scraping of sorts she attributed to tree branches. When we woke up the next morning and headed downstairs, we saw deer tracks just inches from our sliding glass door. That winter, beautiful things were happening all around us, and the evidence was right there in the snow.
It feels like those magical winters happen less and less often. Maybe it’s just part of getting older, but I find that winter often lacks that magic. When it’s the holiday season, everything feels so filled with promise, but after December, it’s hard not to feel how cold and empty everything is.
The thing is, I hate warm weather. I don’t like to sweat, and I much prefer winter fashion. So this time of year should be perfect for me. Why isn’t it?
We’re so disconnected from nature that we only enjoy it when it’s “beautiful” to us. How can we make the stick-like trees and bitter air beautiful?
I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but I do know I like bundling up in lots of layers and drinking something warm. I do know that laughing as the bitter wind hits your face is freeing. I do know that the cold sends us inside to bond with our loved ones or lean into our hobbies.
Winter asks us to slow down. You only appreciate how lovely a hat is on the coldest of days. You only truly enjoy hot cocoa when it helps to warm you up from the inside. Shared laughter and love are even more powerful in such a time of emptiness.
Our lives are so busy that we rarely ever enjoy what’s in front of us unless it’s incredibly spectacular. But winter operates in subtleties. I hope I don’t let all of winter’s charm get lost on me.
That’s easier said than done, of course. There are plenty of things about winter that aren’t worth romanticizing: wet socks, cold that goes down into your bones, itchy sweaters, aversion to leaving the house — I could go on.
I don’t know how to make January more bearable. (Don’t even get me started on February.) (Or March.) I do know, though, that we can choose to be more present, more observative. More open to finding warmth even in the cold.
