Hibernation Nation
It's dark at 4:30am and I'm choosing to embrace
Life is different up here, living in the country. There’s frosty grass in the morning, sounds of geese flying south and rusty pick up trucks. It’s my first winter in the country since age 17. I’m armed with my 4x4 Ford F250 pickup truck with Montana plates (thanks dad). I’m lacking proper long underwear, a shovel, and any type of skis.
I grew up in central NY (great lake effect snow) and started skiing at age 5, later in teenage angst I switched to snowboarding. We lived 10 min drive from the ski area and it was a time parents dropped off their kids at 8:30am and picked them up at 4pm both Saturday and Sunday all winter. We ate lunches of french fries and donuts.
I’m thinking about all the ways I’m going to enjoy winter up in the country. I’ll be both under the covers and in the woods. Let’s prepare.
Kel’s Hudson Valley winter wonderland TODO list
Home snow removal - Shoveling is one of my favorite pastimes. I hear my brother is buying me a mini-electric powered snowblower for Christmas. Sounds cool. Although I’m afraid to use because our growing up our neighbor lost his fingers using a snowblower and I fear power tools.
You Must Remember This Film Club - You must listen to this podcast, if you haven’t yet. It inspires me to watch the films mentioned int he pod. Thankfully Katrina Longworth has put together her list for the watching. I’m ready to hunker under my weighted blanket and get to viewing.
Skiing - cross country and downhill. There’s a lot of talk of ‘flow states’ and I fully feel myself when I’m coasting down hills. There’s a feeling of agelessness, weightlessness, genderless, and confidence – I don’t know what it is exactly what it is but there’s something that feels so good. Same feeling as cycling, too.
Snowmobiling - I want to do this out in the deep woods, like the Adirondacks and wear a full body snowsuit. Seems like a vibe.
Fires - One of the many reasons we bought our house is that it has a fireplace. The smell of smoke in the chimney against the crisp cold air is pure joy. Not to mention my log stacking skills. Logs are stacked up in the garage for safe keeping.
Library books - I’m strictly a library book reader since moving upstate. One of the reasons is that I am not afraid to stop reading a book that doesn’t suit me. I ended up spending too much money on books I ultimately didn’t enjoy. Read my post: Put Your Phone Down to see my nighttime routine that includes book reading.
Geo Guesser - this is a wild card. I stumbled upon this game while scrolling TikTok this week. It drops you in a location anywhere in the world - the whole wide Google mapped world - and you guess where it is. Getting deeper into it (watching people play live on TikTok) has led me to a new obsession that is Geo Hints website. Did you know you can get a general understanding what country is which based on the color of bollards? Do you know what bollards are even?! I do now and they are beautiful.
What are you doing to embrace the chilly dark days ahead? Also I want to make more stews.
