Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Winter.

A lot of complaining gets done in winter.

A lot of complaining.

People around here are summer junkies. They spend months of the year pining for the sunlight, the warmth, the outdoors-y camaraderie of our twelve weeks of summer. They look back on July and August with a nostalgia bordering on delusion, as if it was a different era, a time out of legend when life was simpler and everyone smiled. Lost from their memory are the sleepless nights spent buffeted by the manufactured wind of oscillating fans, and of dodging from air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned offices in order to avoid the “unbearable” temperatures of 90+ degrees. They remember only the hikes, the cookouts, and those pleasant short-sleeved days when birds sang the sun from its bed, when the breeze brought a hint of salt from the Sound, and when wine-infused evenings lasted until tomorrow.

By contrast, Seattleites deem our winter weather a curse and they complain as if beset by biblical plagues, moaning about the wet, the grey, the cold, the rain, the snow, the fog, the late sunup, the early sundown, and (of course) the traffic, because though we (of course) can drive perfectly well in the snow/ice/rain, it’s all those other drivers (of course) who make the roadways a mashup between a slip-n-slide and Fury Road. Winter is depressing, dark, and filled with drear. Egad, how will we ever survive?

Might I suggest a different approach?

Complaining about winter is like being angry at your feet for reaching the ground. Winter is, and there’s no getting around it without migrating or dying. So rather than falling back on your fainting couch when the clouds lid the sky and the precipitation falls in one of its many forms, why not take what winter provides? Accept it, enjoy it while it’s here, because before you know it, winter’s magic will fade. 

Take a moment to relish winter’s quiet, its simple and somnolent nature. Go to the back of the closet and get that favorite sweater, hat, scarf. Go outside. Feel your skin react to the cold, and if nature allows, smile with the sun on your winter-dry face. Seek the Spartan beauty formed by the naked limbs of maple, chestnut, and sweetgum. Taste the rain. Breathe deep of the trembling air and hold it, warm it with your heart, and release it in a cloud of your own design. Cook something hearty and hot, something you would never have in more temperate times. Smell the hearth-hardy spices that draw friends close: nutmeg and mace, cinnamon and clove. Delight in the fact that you can sleep in and still see the dawn, and enjoy the way that the low-slung sunlight adds a crisp drama to every view.

And above all, remember: It won’t last. Soon enough, winter will be gone, and there will come a day when you miss it.

Just try to enjoy it before you that day arrives.

k

Within the valley of the shadowless death
They pray for thunderclouds and rain.
But for the multitudes who stand in the rain
Heaven is where the sun shines

—”Mad Man Moon,” Tony Banks, 1975