You might as well learn to love the winter

If you only knew how beautiful winter is, you would not hate it anymore.

Sure, you may think I’m retired and live at the edge of a lake. If it snows a foot, I don’t have to drive through it. If there is freezing rain, I can simply stay inside and cozy up to the fire with a good book.

It is true that eliminating motorized travel from the winter agenda makes the season more tolerable. If you go to the archives at NorthernLife.ca to find my article from January 2015, you’ll see that I do understand some of the misery of life in the city in winter.

Still, there is no need to hate the whole season. Even in the city amazing beauty can be found on any winter day. Just look out your window at first light. No, not at the street or the building next door.

Look at the sky; the silvery grey of the clouds tinted tangerine and magenta where the sun tries to peak through. If the sky is clear the day will probably be deeply cold, with the promise of a brilliant sun to warm your face once you get out of the house. Do be certain to get out, then take at least a few minutes to breathe in the breath-taking air.

Winter here at the lake is not always just about skiing and snowshoeing, or even just cozying up by the fire while the storm blows.

The wet heavy snow brings trees down across the ski trails — lots of them this year.

It is hard work to clear the path. All the warm spells interspersed with all the snowy days have kept the ice thin on the lakes. The lake looks very pretty, until you try to go there.

A foot of slush hides just below the sparkling innocence of snow above. Getting the snowmachine stuck in slush is no fun at all.

Snowshoeing is still the best way to travel. After the early February thaw and freezing rain came a cold spell to make a crust.

Snowshoes keep me above the slush on the lake. What could be better than walking in sunshine along the shore, the only other tracks in the fresh snow from the fox, the hare, and a few red squirrels?

Deep in the forest the crust isn’t there. Snowshoeing is tough, sinking a foot or two into the deep snow under the shelter of the big pines. It takes some effort to get up a steep hill, sliding back a half step with every step forward.

I have to pause to catch my breath. And I always get caught up in the magnificence all around.

When I go to the city each week, someone is sure to gripe about the snow and the cold. So, I wonder. What’s the point of complaining? We live in the north. Winter exists.

Might as well find a way to enjoy it, even if it is only for a few minutes each day. Start with first light tomorrow. Wake up start the day looking out to the eastern sky.

Viki Mather has been commenting for Northern Life on the natural world and life in Greater Sudbury since the spring of 1984.