Each year in December, Swedish television runs a new julkalender, or Advent calendar, with new episodes daily through Christmas. This year’s story followed a family running a ski resort that had, mysteriously, not gotten any snowfall, while the areas/resorts all around them had. (Magic may have been involved.)
Though I chose not to follow the daily episodes, I did feel a kindship with the family and their woes. Last year was the first time in my lifetime–going on half a century–where we didn’t have a proper winter in MN. In the past, I would cringe at how brown everything was when visiting family in Texas over the holidays. Yet in winter 2023-2024, they received snow and we didn’t. In fact, most of our winter temperatures were in the 40s and 50s Fahrenheit, too warm for snow, so we were in a world of tan-beige for months. We had two snow spats (too wimpy to be considered storms), one in October and one in April. The former didn’t last, and the latter was too little, too late.
This winter, we did manage to get a decent coating of snow before Christmas (enough for some lovely snowshoeing), but rain and high temps had erased it by early January. Poling the folks in our online Swedish class, we determined that there was no snow in central Minnesota, the flatlands of Colorado, or in Pennsylvania, but there had been snow south of all of us. Eventually, we did get another dusting in MN that stuck, but it’s melting this week.
Back when the last round of snow melted in mid-January, I heard an out-of-place sound: the beginning of the arboreal chorus of toads and frogs. They experience brumation rather than hibernation, which is a slowing (torpor) rather than a sleeping. But stirring early because of abnormally high temperatures, as many frogs, toads, and bats did last year, can lead to starvation, as there are no bugs for them to eat. This year, the chorus did eventually quiet when temperatures dipped back down (and eventually became downright frigid), but I’ve been listening for it to start up again.
I’m not against warm temperatures; I’m just against them arriving out of season. One of the reasons I didn’t stay in California after college was the lack of seasons. It just feels wrong on a gut level.
The Swedes (especially in the far north, likely borrowed from the Sami), often separate out the seasons beyond the usual four. There’s summer, fall-summer, fall, fall-winter, winter, spring-winter, spring, and spring-summer. I’m all for the hopefulness of spring-winter (vårvinter), but it’s too early. I’ve been trying to make friends with the cold and snow via snowshoeing, or even more extreme practices like a winter dip/ice bath in one of the local lakes (checked off my bucket list last year), but the unpredictable, fluctuating temperatures make it difficult to fully engage.
I’m not ready for spring, or even spring-winter. I’m reading Root Beer Lady by Bob Cary, a biography of Dorothy Molter, the last resident of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota. Though the winters the book describes are often brutal, they make more sense to me as winter than the brown I’m seeing out my window. The worst part is the uncertainty. There might be more snow, or there might not. Who knows? (Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow this year, but I believe he’s right less than 50% of the time.)
Stockholm is a bit further north than where I am in MN–about 60 degrees north to my 45. As a result, their summer days stretch into the late hours (not quite the land of the midnight sun, but close), and their winter nights are longer and darker. The Swedes appreciate snow not only as a sign of winter but also because of its ability to reflect light. Winter nights–and even days–are brighter with a coating of snow on the ground.
Some people in MN say that we don’t have much of a spring here, that we often go from winter directly into summer. But I’d prefer that to going directly from fall to spring, or even to spring-winter (which if feels like it might be at this point). “A long and lustrous winter” (to quote Bob Murray in Groundhog Day) is part of our identity as Minnesotans. Its loss is felt in our bones.
Have you gotten snow this year? Is it expected or not? What part does winter play in your life?
Numberless Dreams 