Making the most of Winter

I have a confession to make.  I do not like winter.  It is cold and bleak.  There is less daylight.  My dry skin feels like sandpaper.  When it snows I have to shovel.  My car is permanently dirty from all of the road salt.  For all of these reasons, I am mostly miserable throughout the season.  I have tried to enjoy winter through outdoor activities like skiing but with mostly disappointing results.  All of this makes me feel guilty because I end up not enjoying a quarter of the year.  So how do I pull myself out of a winter funk?

Here is how:

When I was 13, my family went on a vacation to Disney World.  We visited the Epcot theme park and went to the Canada pavilion, which is part of the park's World Showcase.  Once in "Canada" we watched a 15 minute movie that featured the main attractions and sights in Canada, "our great neighbor to the north" (and yes, the narrator said that at least three times).  The movie was shown in a 360 degree theater. We stood in the center of the room with large screens surrounding us on all sides, making us feel like we were actually in the movie.  There was aerial footage of cornfields and mountains and city-scapes, all breathtaking but sort of boring.  I had almost written off the entire experience until the footage showed people skating on a frozen river.  The point of view footage made it seem as though we, the viewers in the theater, were skating down the river with people on all sides.  

At the time, I loved ice skating.  I went every weekend to a local ice rink but I had never skated outside.  In that moment, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the cold air rushing past me as I skated down a frozen river mid-day, surrounded by happy strangers.  It was an exhilarating thought but after we walked out of the theater and into the hot Florida sun, I quickly pushed it from my mind.  

Fast forward nearly 20 years to present day.  Last night, as I surfed the Internet for travel deals, I found that feeling again.  It is as if I bit into a York peppermint patty.  I saw this picture and was automatically transported back to that adolescent memory. 

Courtesy: Ottawa Tourism

  

This is the famed Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Ontario.  For the past 43 years the city has opened the frozen waterway to skaters during the coldest months of the year.  This year, the canal opened to skaters on January 18, 2013 and will stay open as long as the ice is safe.  Workers test the thickness every morning and post the results on a local website.  The canal not only serves as the world's largest skating rink but while it is open, people also use it as a means of transportation.  Residents can be seen making their commute to work during the morning and evening hours.  Imagine that, a rush hour on the ice!

I look at this picture and think about how Canadians embrace winter in a way that I do not.  During February, Ottawa hosts Winterlude, a three-week festival that celebrates all things winter.  The Rideau Canal is one of the main focal points of the festival with vendors set up along the banks.  People enjoy local food like Beaver Tails and spirits, huddle around fire pits and listen to live music.  There is the Snowflake Kingdom, an amusement park set up for the festival.  There is also plenty of outdoor splendor at Gatineau National Park in neighboring Quebec, where you can snowshoe, go dog sledding and even ski.  

So the moral of the story is, there is a lot to love about winter.  For people like me, it is all about finding the right image or tapping into the right emotion to find that affinity.  I think I have found it, but now I have to make the trek to Canada!