On Choosing Winter

Learning to stop running south

I found an adorable Airbnb in Canada.

It’s in a small town called Stratford, set along a river appropriately named Avon. The downtown looks quaint. There’s even a restaurant inside a former church. Stratford is, unsurprisingly, a town devoted to theater. The Stratford Festival’s line up this year includes three Shakespeare plays.

The apartment oozes charm with exposed brick walls, a spacious modern kitchen, and big windows where light streams into the main living space. I imagined myself creating a cozy little nook in a world where the elements outside were harsh. An intentional existence of reading, writing, lighting too many candles. Coffee, tea, and long quiet days. Staying put.

I sent a link to a friend.

“Adorable,” she agreed. “But I can assure you that you don’t want to be there.”

She wasn’t talking about the town or Canada. She was talking about winter. This from someone who grew up in upstate New York and knows exactly what long, cold winters ask of a person.

For years, I’ve organized my travels to avoid them.

For the past five years, if I wasn’t in Mexico for the brunt of winter, I was in Guatemala. My arrival in Europe was as punctual as spring flowers popping up for a new season. I’ve never had an aversion to extreme heat; in fact, I rather like it. When I’m walking around on a warm January day and checking the weather back home, I feel a faint smugness, as if I somehow found the secret to doing life right by refusing to hunker down and passively wait for the sun to return.

Winter, to me, was something to outsmart.

This, of course, makes my sudden desire to go north in winter feel absurd. And yet, I seriously considered it. I didn’t see it as escaping into winter so much as seeking an enclosure around myself and my work. A chosen hibernation. Not of movement, but stillness.

I blame Copenhagen for this shift.

I recently had a one-night layover, which gave me just enough time to walk the city and experience winter in a way that surprised me. I liked the cold air on my face, the way it filled my lungs when I breathed deeply. But more than that, I didn’t mind being out in it.

I watched the Danes move through their day as if it were spring.

A dad biked alongside his young son, leaning over to steady his handlebars as they pedaled side by side. People stood around outdoor pub tables or sat on benches outside cafés, coffee in hand. I was warmly tucked inside, still wrapped in my winter coat and scarf, gloves resting on the table next to my filter coffee.

I even liked the darkness I ascended into from my hotel. The cafe’s warm light spilling onto the street through its glass façade, luminous and inviting. I followed it instinctively, like a moth to a light.

I’d never visited a Scandinavian country, despite being fascinated by their cultures, especially their architecture and minimalist aesthetic. Winter kept me away. I stayed safely in Southern Europe, where the sun and warmth are easier to come by. Years ago, I visited Amsterdam in the winter and found it so miserably rainy and cold that I never returned. Maybe in the summer, I told myself as the train departed for Paris.

But Copenhagen chipped away at that narrative.

At the airport, I picked up The Little Book of Hygge. I’m typically wary of lifestyle concepts that get flattened into aesthetics, but hygge gave language to something I’d already been circling–this idea that winter isn’t something to endure or escape, but a season with its own rhythm and intelligence.

I know hygge extends beyond winter, but for me, it offered a framework for something I’d long resisted–slowness. Intentionality. Retreat.

The things I hate most about winter–scraping ice off car windows, commuting on slick roads–are no longer part of my life. I don’t have a car, and I don’t commute. And yet I’d still been imagining winter as an obstacle to survive, rather than a shift to work within.

Seen differently, winter could be a time to turn inward. To write. To read. To overdo soups, candles, coffee, and hot tea. To let the world quiet down without trying to outrun it.

This shift softened one of my major hangups with Paris–its long, gray winters. I hadn’t seen the possibility in them. I’d ignored what winter offers there–museums with fewer people, long afternoons tucked into cafés, and warm evenings at home.

To test this, the week I landed back in the U.S., I was invited to an Elemental Wellness Retreat in Wisconsin. In the past, I might have declined without much thought, but the timing felt right, and so much of the retreat centered on practices I’ve been working with–breathwork, yoga, meditation–along with sauna, cold plunges, and winter activities.

Sauna: a hard yes.

Cold plunge: maybe, but probably not.

Winter activities: I’d rather not.

My weekend plans

Photos from previous retreats show participants standing outside in swimsuits, hats, and gloves, stretching together in the snow. Sledding, skiing, and ice fishing–none of this is naturally my terrain. I can imagine a snowy winter hike, but only if my feet stay dry. A person who has avoided winter for five years does not own snow boots. My version of winter gear is layered hiking and running clothes. I could also be perfectly happy reading by a fire, watching the activities from afar.

But that’s the point, isn’t it?

After years of arranging my life to avoid winter, I’m being asked to exist in it. Not to love it. Not to conquer it. Just to be in it. To see what happens when I stop escaping.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be a cold-plunge person (I’ll let you know next week after the weekend retreat). I suspect that it’s not in the cards for me.

I decided not to go to Canada. I booked a flight back to Mexico City instead.

But I’m no longer running south by default.

The rhythm of colder months feels more like mine.