Preparing for Winter

Andrea Scarpino

Marquette, Michigan

 

Our apartment’s broad front windows look out over Marquette’s downtown—the Landmark Inn, the courthouse and post office, various old buildings housing apartments, businesses. I love eating my breakfast in our living room, watching the downtown come to life, the construction workers across the street sitting on concrete curbs to drink coffee. And then reading there at night, watching downtown darken, streetlights illuminate.

This summer, each day felt like two or three, we had light so long—at 11pm, I could still see across the city, see people walking home from the saloon next door. Last night, the sky was already dark by 8:00. The trees outside my windows are starting to change colors, pretty oranges on some of the leaves, yellow on others.

When I told friends in Lost Angeles we were moving to the Upper Peninsula, they often said something like, Good luck with the winter. Locals use words like bad weather, surviving and harsh. I’m not sure if they’re just trying to be honest, or if there’s a pride that comes with being able to survive months of snow, of cloudy skies, of freezing temperatures, a pride in that kind of heartiness. But I think to get through this first winter especially, I have to approach it with curiosity, excitement. If I live with a sense of dread, I’ll be miserable all winter. And miserable is not something I do well.

So here are my preparations: layering. This winter, I’m ignoring the price of clothes—I’m just buying them. After four years in Southern California, I literally own four long sleeve shirts. That has to change. Forget our normal clothing budget, forget my normal worries about consumption, this first year, I’m buying what I need to feel comfortable.

Vitamin D, which I’ve already started taking, and full spectrum light bulbs. I may still feel down this winter, may still suffer from a lack of the sunlight of which I’ve been accustomed, but hopefully these will make things manageable.

Winter sports. Cross country and downhill skiing, snowshoeing, skating. Although I love to run, treadmills bore me to tears after half an hour, and I’m not optimistic that I’ll be able to run outside for most of the winter. So skiing it will be. And I’m pretty excited. I haven’t skied since I lived in France eight years ago and although Marquette doesn’t have the Alps, we do have hundreds of miles of cross country trails, as well as a hill for downhill and snowboarding. I’m buying a season pass, my own equipment. I’m going to make it as easy as possible to get outside, relish the snowfall, relish the winter.

My LA yoga teacher said in class one day that we’re always asking for something else, something bigger, different, other than. Said that a radical act is loving what we have, not asking for things to be anything than they are. This quickly approaching winter, as the leaves continue changing colors, as the temperatures begin to drop, I’m going to practice the radical act of being in winter. Of loving it. Of looking out my front room windows each morning and imagining the possibilities only winter can unfold. This may take a lot of practice. But the alternative—misery, longing, counting the days till spring—is not something that interests me. So I’ll keep practicing.

 

 

Poet, essayist, and activist Andrea Scarpino can be visited at: www.andreascarpino.com