Hi friends,
I want to start off more simply this time. I’m getting better at resisting my very ingrained urges to over-complicate things, and I’m getting better at sticking with an impulse through my first, early rumblings with it. Spaces like this make me nervous because I never know what to say. The urge to be overly formal, to write something meaningful, to send y’all something “worth reading” always takes over, and I immediately get too in my head, and then nothing ever actually gets written. Take a chill pill, Kirin. Fuck.
And so, again, I want to start off more simply this time. I want this to feel like letters to friends, because, ultimately, that’s what it is.
As I write this, I’m wrapping up my first full-fledged winter season since 2014. I can’t believe it’s been almost 10 years since I lived through an actual winter, let alone a Midwestern winter where, at its coldest, we experienced a stretch of days with lows in the -30s, and we woke up to windowsills glistening with ice.
A dirty windowsill with a large but beautiful sheet of ice on it, and yes, this is the indoor side of my office window
By and large, I loved this winter. Only in the last week or so, when we’ve been bouncing between 50 degrees and foot-and-a-half-of-snow weather within days of each other have I started to feel a little over it. I’ve never minded winter—I find the cold bracing, refreshing, and cleansing. In December, I stumbled across this IG reel from a Native creator that reinforced my feelings towards it: winter medicine is mental clarity. I think I always felt that way about it, before moving to the land of eternal summer.
Our house was one of the main factors the winter wasn’t hard to bear. Understandably, a lot of people go stir crazy, succumb to cabin fever at some point in the 6 months that winter reigns. In our household, however, ‘cabin fever’ is less of a fraught mental state and more 1,00,000% our aesthetic, especially given the chalet-feel of our WI home. It’s also a far cry from any CA place we ever lived in: with 3,000+ square feet for two people and one nugget, there are lots of different areas in our house set up for different activities and vibes, which gives us plenty of scenery changes depending on our mood, the day, or anything else.
We also tried to get outside as much as possible. Matthew’s hella Norwegian, and a few years ago we read some piece about friluftsliv, a Norwegian word/value which means ‘open-air living’ and essentially boils down to getting outside no matter what the weather conditions are. That’s been much easier to do here, and whether it was walking to the weekly farmer’s market every Saturday before it moved indoors for winter, or taking our golden Nugget for long walks to the marsh and small lake nearby, I’ve spent more time outside here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
Running has also gotten me outside more regularly than ever. I’ve now been running on and off for as long as I’ve lived away from winter (almost 10 years now???? can you/I even believe it????). But I felt a real change, seemingly overnight, when we landed in WI last June. For the first time, it felt like my brain wanted to run, and my body was ready to just do it. So, despite our temporary rental being in the hilliest fucking area ever, I started running again, and I kept it up throughout our move to Sun Prairie and our first fall here. I even went for a run while traveling for my brother’s wedding, much to the surprise of my family.
After running all summer and all fall, I wasn’t sure how winter would affect me. But I was for the surprise this time because, as it turns out, I fucking love cold-weather running? As it turns out, I run around outside in snow and wind and temps below 20 with a dopey fucking smile on my face? If Kirin from 10 years ago drove past Kirin of Now running 4 miles out of doors at the height of winter while smiling like an idiot, past Kirin might prevent present Kirin from even being here at all by being so fucking startled that she jerked the car right off the road and into a ditch so that future Kirin never even started running at all, let alone integrating running into their routine so thoroughly that they now just get sad when it turns out they CAN’T run.
A blurry selfie of me looking like a Very Serious Runner—but the nerd wall of Escaflowne LASER DISK COVERS behind me should balance it out
Anyway, all this is to say that the winter did exactly what it’s supposed to do: it swept out of the cobwebbed corners of my mind and brought big ol’ gusts of invigorating clarity. Sure, it is still somehow snowing a little bit again today…😅…but man, I missed the natural rhythm of change and connection that seasons lend. Seasons force you to recontextualize yourself and your life: how do you adapt and evolve with the winter, since you have to adapt and evolve? What does winter bring to you you that you can carry into spring? How does winter make you more grateful for those rising temperatures, for more freedom to go outside? What do you miss about winter when it’s passed, and what will you look forward to come next winter?
I’d love to hear what this winter held for you.
I’m going to try to make this a more regular thing, potentially once a month. No promises but to try.
Yours,
KM