I was never afraid of the winter before I came to Minnesota. Actually, I remember liking it — even looking forward to it! Snowy streets, the smell of pine, hot drinks in cold hands, red cheeks and rainbow scarves… but ever since I experienced negative 50, my fond seasonal recollections have been replaced by memories of Minnesota itself communicating to me, via the bitterest wind possible, that it thinks I should go away. As we fell back an hour on Sunday, my friends were talking about the changing seasons, and I realized something alarming: I think I’ve become a little preoccupied with the winter. Daylight savings hardly registered in my mind, because the ghost of winter haunts me throughout the entire year in a way it never used to before.
We’ll begin in the fall, because that’s where we are now. You can tell it’s fall in Minnesota only by the trees and the weather reports, because no one here will dress for the weather until temperatures go negative. On Friday, the high was 40, and 4 people in my theater class were wearing T-shirts. Readers, I was in a winter coat, scarf, and ear muffs. I had a moment, walking to the Wietz, where I wondered if I was the crazy one, but the self-doubt soon passed, and I’m back to firmly believing that everyone else is the problem. A fun fact about me, if you somehow haven’t heard enough of those, is that I used to consider fall my favorite season. I love all the stereotypical things there are to love about fall, which I really don’t have to list here, because you know them already.
My first fall on campus was a perfect college autumn — the trees outside of Laird were beautiful, I went apple picking with friends at Fireside, we baked pumpkin pies and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. It may also have been my last perfect college autumn. Now that I know what follows, the fall seems, not to be dramatic here, a bit of a death rattle. Does anyone know what I mean? Does a little part of you wince when you step outside on a glorious fall day, because the cold in the air whispers a warning to you about snow on the way?
Apologies — I was trying to get through this without sounding like a bad poet. What I mean to say is that I find it hard to enjoy the fall in a carefree sort of way, because I’m always casting worried glances into the coming months.
In the spring, the amount of joy I get from seeing those little purple flowers shoot out of the ground is concerning. (I recently learned that they’re called Siberian Squills, which is too good a name to go unmentioned). The lilac bushes all over campus? You can catch me stopping and sniffing them like some sort of weirdo on any day of the week. And if you see someone kneeling next to a flowerbed trying to get a nice angle of daffodils in the arb — that’s also probably me, and sorry for blocking the path. I should mention here that I’m not an outdoorsy sort of person, and yet, come spring, I’ve been known to head into the arb, plop myself down on a branch, and do my homework in the sun. It’s disconcerting, honestly, but there you have it. I can only put it down to pure relief that the cold is finally loosening its grip, because I never used to welcome spring quite so heartily. And in the summer, when I’m not even in Minnesota, things are no better! I found myself on the beach this August, sitting under an umbrella, watching some piping plovers run along the shoreline, when suddenly the thought “I’m so glad I’m not freezing right now” crossed my mind. I find I’m weirdly obsessed with the sunshine, like a housecat on steroids; in the spring and even in the summer, it feels vaguely shameful to stay inside on a sunny day. Sunshine guilt is not something I ever experienced before I got here, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
Perhaps I’m simply in an awkward limbo stage right now, as four years is apparently not enough time to learn how to navigate the Midwestern seasons in a way that doesn’t leave you always thinking about the cold. Maybe the native Minnesotans, or the professors who have been here for years, aren’t haunted like I am; maybe you’ve all gotten used to the winter, and it doesn’t cast freezing shadows over the other times of year. Or maybe I’m just a weakling! Maybe this is totally un-relatable. If so, I’m jealous. Or I think I am. I can’t honestly say whether my sudden attention to the weather is a good thing, a bad one, or if it simply is. Is it helpful to be aware that the world is always changing? Is it somehow important to experience new levels of joy in the spring and summer, even if some dread leeches into the fall? Do I need to meditate, or something, so I’m more in tune with the present season, and not always preoccupied with what’s coming? Probably! But who’s to say, really. I don’t even know if this awareness will go away when I leave, or if I’ll always carry it with me. Given that this coming winter will likely be the last I ever spend in Minnesota, I guess I’ll find out relatively soon.
For now, though, I’m trying to memorize the way the trees look while they still have some leaves, and reminding myself to be happy the sun isn’t setting at 2 in the afternoon yet. Enjoy the last days of fall, everyone.