Beyond the obvious time to grasp on to all things right and healthy to start anew, January also means the real commencement of winter. Not the airy fairy cocktails and wrapping paper, sleigh bells ring are you listening happy cloud that is December, but the real bear down with your cold hands wrapped around a snow shovel for a couple of months type winter.
For the last few years, to truly welcome the icy wrath of winter, we have spent New Year’s Eve at our family cottage in Muskoka. If you like winter or at least like being somewhere warm surrounded by winter, this is a lovely place to be.
We all jam in, four couples, one other set of kids and play games, both video and classic, and eat rich cheeses and drink big nasty wines. We even take our respective dogs (all three of them, only two here, Lucy and our Alice, looking spry for 13 years old) on the frozen lake for some well needed exercise.
We toboggan and hike in the forest and we take selfies thinking we are MEC blue steel male supermodels.
And then finally, when we think we have done enough outdoors to justify the cracking open of another bottle of wine, we sit around this and chat.
It has turned into a nice little tradition that will hopefully continue until our respective kids become awkward around each other due their opposing genders. But until then, they can all sit in a bottom bunk and watch a movie while the adults make fun of each other upstairs.
So if this is the true beginning of winter, I think I can manage.
How about you, do you like what winter has to offer, or is it all about buckling down and enduring the next three months of snow and cold?
This looks like a beautiful (and fun) tradition Jason! But having said that, I’m definitely not a winter person. Maybe it was my upbringing without the experience of a cottage and the great outdoor sports. My family burrowed in the house when the weather dipped below freezing and had the heat cranked up to feel tropical. Winter to me is now looking forward to trips to warmer climates. I will be that snowbird aging seaside literally rocking that white wicker furniture.
But I’ll grin and bear it for now. Last year, we spent the a week with hubby’s family at Charlevoix, Quebec. I must say it was magical seeing my kids enjoy the winter snow and conquering Le Massif …ahem, I stayed in le chalet with my tea and everyone was happy. But here in the city of grey skies, sloppy boots and slush…I count the days before for the planes to take us away to sun and surf each winter.
I love this, also. In the woods… cracking fire… big, fat wines… friends. I love this.
I do not love any other part of the wintertiming, though. The foraging for groceries in the minus 20… chipping away at frozen snow on slippery front stairs… being outdoors AT ALL, really. Unless I am cottaging, I say, BRING FORTH THE SPRING, PLEASE.
Until them, I’ll try not to sob…
what time should I be there next year???
Dreamy.
I would (theoretically) always struggle with the worry about who would shovel my 150 feet of sidwalk while I was away. This started the ONE time in winter Steve and I got away for a 4 days to Whistler when the BIG ONE hit Toronto and my poor dad shovelled for us.
Now with less than 20 feet (having moved downtown) so I might just start to take winter holidays again.
I wonder if you keep piles of snow shoes at your cottage for snow fun?
I have visions of it,
happy joy to you all
i