Embracing Winter

I usually dread the first snow because I know I can’t fight the inevitable: Winter is coming.

I usually hate the cold, snow and that awful gray gloom that winter brings, but the reason I cling to the last moments of fall is because winter makes me sad. Yeah, I know all about Seasonal Affective Disorders and vitamin d and all that jazz and I believe a lot of that applies to me, but today I started to wonder whether my usual winter depression isn’t a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do I get sad in the winter because I expect to?

This morning we awoke to a light dusting of snow. I was outraged of course, and proceeded to rant about how nature is going commercial, bringing Christmas in October right along with the department stores, but after I drove the kids to their charter school and walked them into the hollow, I stopped. Yes, I was freezing. Yes, it was cloudy and the hills all around me were white when they should’ve been blazing orange, but instead of cussing out the snow and feeling miserable, I tried to enjoy the cold. A few years ago, Sam and I went for a winter walk and I froze in my woolen pea coat and he only had on a tee shirt. I told him he needed to get his head checked and he told me “Sometimes feeling cold is part of feeling alive.” He does wax poetic on occasion and I’ve never forgotten that. I decided to embrace the nippy cold, my ears and nose going numb, the biting chill through my clothes. I did feel alive.
Without thinking, I pulled my new camera out, which is unusual because I’m not a shutterbug (obviously I want to be, because I carry that camera everywhere.) Could I find beauty in this landscape of winter taking over my beloved autumn?
Normally, this would’ve been a super grumpy day for me. Winter is coming anyway, so why not embrace it? The seasons will chance again, so why not enjoy them while they’re here instead of wishing for something else? Embrace winter, embrace change. Hopefully I’ll still sound like PollyAnna in February, but there you have it. I, McKella, bona fide hater of winter, am going to embrace the cold, the snow and the season, and maybe that’ll make it a little more pleasant.