Whenever I complain about winter cold someone will say to me, “You need to get out more, enjoy the winter!”.
Well yes, I say, “I would, if only it were not so darn COLD!”
As much as I appreciate the beauty of a bright moon shadow on the snow or the soft snowfall on the spruces through my windows, I am really a tropical flower. Cold bothers me.
Thank goodness for the gym where I can exercise all winter and still stay cozy and indoors! And there are other indoor pursuits that winter offers that I can recommend: watching a movie at home with the family while you enjoy a bowl of popcorn, baking homemade bread, making gingerbread to serve warm and fragrant from the oven, cozying up before the fireplace to read a good book. Tribal people in moderate and cold climates have been doing this for millennium… in winter people would gather round the hearth, mend fishing nets, carve new tools, scrape skins for use as clothing, make baskets and bowls, tell stories. Perhaps we in modern day North America have forgotten the value of the seasons, which like the in breath and out breath, require different things of us. In Spring, we will all scatter, like seeds broadcast on the wind, to mountain biking, sailing, landscaping, hiking, even more frequent treks to the mailbox down the street.
This winter at our house we have been hunkering in, building new neural pathways of family connection. The nearly grown up kids have claimed part of the basement as a Man Cave, a place to just BE, to work on a project, or have a snack, even homework is less onerous if completed there.
I am all for fresh air and being in the great outdoors. This winter I am reclaiming the goodness and power of looking within.