Cold is relative depending where you were raised. In the South they are freezing when it's in the 40's. We think that's balmy for winter here in the Midwest. Yet, with my southern upbringing zero and below is a 'stay inside' type of day.
This past Saturday I heard a friend talking via Zoom about going skiing. When others confronted her about the cold her reply was the sun was shining. I'm sorry but no amount of sunshine is going to warm minus degrees for me the transplanted southerner.
My neighbor Gail ( originally from the Upper Pennisula) walks around in sandals in winter and proudly shared our Sunday's early morning temp with her hometown family and friends ...
When we first got Balto, our Texan rescue Husky-Shepard, he didn't even want to go outside in winter but now embraces it in all forms. He just plops down in the snow as if it were a blanket.
Now I have to cajole Balto to come back inside as I worry about him being out in the elements too long. Of course, it doesn't help that he has a new found deer hide to work on either.
Personally, I'm not that meshugenah(crazy) to let any food/activity entice me to be outside in sub zero winter weather. How 'bout you?
I was the same until I spent a decade in Nebraska where we regularly had long lasting blizzards and temperatures as low as minus 40 during which the university never closed and I walked a little over a mile to teach my classes. That's when I discovered that'gear'for that kind of weather is actually made and, when worn, works very well! Once I discovered that, I looked forward to the sub-zero's with winds that drove snow almost to the peak of our two-story roof and blocked off all doors and windows on two sides of the house for weeks at a time. Houses in Lincoln tended to be built with a door on the east side because the snow always came in from the west and the North so we always had a way to get in and out. For me, discovering that I could be so warm I would even sweat while playing outside in huge amounts of snow proved to be fun enough that I even looked forward to it.
ReplyDeleteAfter moving out here to the PNW, I had further confirmation that the right gear makes all the difference and that there will be times while snowshoeing when I will need to strip down to just a long sleeve shirt on a sunny day even when the temperatures are in the single digits or teens. Sun reflecting off snow at higher altitudes can be quite hot! That said, I am quite sure that without these particular Life experiences I would still have my Arkansas temperature settings intact as you do.