What does winter mean for you?

Mostly for me it is now a time of physical hibernation and mental/emotional planting of new seed thoughts and ideas - a germination period for growth.  I have a distinct dislike of being cold, and at some point in my life, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, I will find a way to be comfortably warm all year 'round.

The only thing I like about the snow is that it covers over the barrenness of the leaf-less trees and brown grass, making looking outside my windows at least a bit less hard on the eyes.  I totally hate driving in winter.  I don't go out unless I have a really good reason to do so (mostly for groceries), so I tend to stay huddled in my place as much as possible.  I totally hate having to wear boots, and put on so many heavy clothes in order to keep warm outside.  It is just so time and energy consuming!!!  To pass the time I do a lot of reading, meditating, surfing the 'net, and watching TV shows I've taped. This year I also plan on doing some actual work on projects I've been putting off for too long.

As a child, my earliest "fond" memory of winter was digging a snow house out of the HUGE snow-bank plowed up in front of a neighbour kids yard - I was probably about 5 years old, because I hadn't started school yet.  It was a truly amazing feat - we had several "rooms", poked holes down from above for air and light, and it lasted about a week after we made it.  The whole area covered was probably a tunnel about 30 feet long, with "rooms" off on either side at intervals.  It took us about a week to build.  The snowbank was probably 8 or 10 feet high.  We rarely had enough snow to do that, so it must have been an unusual winter in the southern-most part of Canada.  I've only since then seen that kind of snow living in Northern Ontario (Sudbury and Elliot Lake, where I remember many a cold morning and night digging myself out of or into long driveways, a foot or many times more, deep in snow with only a shovel). Neither of our parents seemed to be aware that we were doing this, and they had a royal fit about it when they discovered what we'd done.

As a child, the other thing I liked about winter was going ice-skating - this was always an outdoor activity, and I totally hated mild winters where the ice on the pond didn't freeze enough to safely skate on it.  We did have a couple of home-made rinks on our extra "lot", but my brother and his friends mostly monopolized it for playing hockey - while I wanted to figure skate.  I think that's when I started to dislike winter - around 14 years of age.

In my teens, the other reason I disliked winter was that I had to walk a mile, morning and night, to and from the bus, and some of those days, burdened with a large heavy purse (didn't have knap-sacks back then), gym bag with either swim-suit/towels or runners and gym suit, and an arm-full of books and binders, I trudged my way through four-to-six inches of slimy slush, or slid down the ice-covered road (often finding the wet pavement with my bottom) to only have to stand and wait an extra twenty minutes to half an hour for a bus that never seemed to be on time.  It was either running ahead of schedule on good days, or abysmally late on nasty days!

So for me mostly Winter weather is the season of "Baw! Humbug!!!"  Can hardly wait for Spring!