A Theory of Winter

Winter doesn’t “need” a theory. In Minnesota, it does need an attitude however. Here’s mine: Winter is not a season, it is where we live. Summer, spring and fall, grouped together make up at best 50% of the year in Minnesota. We live in a land like Iceland. When one of those cute short “seasons” come, we enjoy it, but it is an aberration from our natural state which is winter.

This is not meant to depress the winter-haters. Try it out: “I live in Iceland.” Iceland is cool, right? Don’t they have good music and a lively bar scene? Active volcanoes? Geothermal heating? We don’t have those last two, but arguably the first if you can get out of your driveway or not freeze to death waiting for a bus (and now light rail!)

 

I love it that store clerks don’t bug me by saying, “Did you get out and enjoy the weather?” like they do on a nice summer/spring/fall day. I don’t have to feel guilty that I stayed cozy indoors with my wood burning fireplace, forcing myself to be “creative.” I find it invigorating that Death is at our door. You get locked out in your underwear and you could die an ignoble death. “We found him, um, frozen, um in his skivvies,” the rural policeman would report, choked up with embarrassment. Accident or purposeful, the coroner would want to know. “He died like a Minnesotan–in his underwear.”     Put that in the report.

     

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