Winter in the Northwoods

Learning to Embrace the Cold at HoneyRock

By HoneyRock Center for Leadership Development

March 24^th, 2022

When people think of HoneyRock, they usually picture a summer paradise with lush green woods and canoes on the lake. The beauty of this place is certainly on display in the warmer months, but HoneyRock doesn't hibernate when winter comes. Instead, it takes on a whole different type of beauty, rich with opportunities only possible in the cold. Now that Spring is upon us, I'm realizing just how much I will miss the winter.

I’m from Chicago, where winter is viewed as a long, blustery, and inconvenient season that we just have to get through. Once the holiday glow dissipates in January, everything seems gray until April. Fresh snowfall is beautiful for the first five seconds, but instantly turns brown and sludgy from all the traffic. Folks shiver at the bus stop, craning their necks to see if the bus is coming to save them from their misery. Everything feels harder in winter, but we Chicagoans don't really alter our schedules or lifestyles to fit the season - we just muscle our normal routines through it. We say we’re proud of our “Midwestern grit,” but I think it's fair to say that deep down, most of us can't wait for the springtime thaw, for the conditions of life, work, and family to be friendlier.

Leaving the city behind and moving up to the Northwoods as a Fellow has allowed me to experience winter in an entirely different way. I've gotten to wake up to a Narnia-like landscape blanketed in pristine snow, marked only by the footprints of woodland animals and friends. I've admired icicles glimmering from every eave and tree branch. I've felt snowflakes balancing on my eyelashes.

I've delighted in the beauty of winter here, but I've also learned a lot about living well. I've learned how life-giving it is to work with the seasons, not against them. When winter comes, the HoneyRock community doesn't just continue with life as usual - we adapt. We turn the outdoor rock climbing wall into an ice climbing wall. We strap on snowshoes and listen to the satisfying crunch of snow underfoot. We learn about ice fishing on the frozen lake. We stand in the woods and feed black-capped chickadees from mittened hands. We shed our coats and mittens in freezing temperatures during sweaty, rowdy games of Broomball. We cross-country ski every day if we want to, and we read by the fire on those days that are just too cold to do anything else. We don’t wait for the conditions to improve in order to live fully in our present reality. Rather, we modify our outlook and routine to make the most of it. We embrace and respond to the season we're in, collaborating with it so that we can continue to be active, to learn, to grow, and to engage, no matter what time of year it is.

Embracing the winter isn’t always fun and games, though. It’s a choice, and I’ve seen people here at HoneyRock choose to meet moments of its inevitable inconvenience with grace. I remember a day when the grounds crew had groomed the cross country ski trails, only for a heavy snowfall to hit that night and obscure all of their hard work before anyone could enjoy it. This meant they had to go out and do it all over again the next day, and instead of groaning and rolling their eyes, they just took it in stride. They knew and accepted that they couldn't always predict or control the work required in a given day, which is only natural, but not often practiced in modern society. They didn’t feel betrayed when the weather didn't work in accordance with their plans, but faithfully got back out there and re-groomed the trails with a smile.

Another misadventure with the weather occurred just in time for our Broomball tournament finals. Everyone was excited that the big night had finally arrived, but just before the first match was about to begin, we discovered that the courts were not in the best shape. The ice had softened a lot in a burst of warmth over the weekend, and large sections of the courts had cracked and become slushy ponds. We didn't know if they would be in even worse condition the following week, so we just dove in and played the tournament, slipping, sliding, and splashing in the freezing swamp of ice fragments. It was wild and hilarious, Broomball like we'd never known before. By the end of each 40-minute game, the players' pants were soaked and their shoelaces were so frozen that it was impossible to untie them without the help of a hair dryer. Even so, we managed to play through the whole bracket and crown the champions at the end. The unpredictable weather had a less than ideal impact on our courts, but the tournament was memorable and entertaining nonetheless, and in my opinion, a pretty legendary way to close out the intramural season.

Winter at HoneyRock has taught me many things, but perhaps the most significant is how game-changing it is to fully embrace the reality I find myself in. Choosing to accept and make the most of the ecosystem I'm a part of, with all of its unpredictability, allows me to cultivate an attitude of grace and adaptability. It invites me to consider how I will respond to circumstances as they arise, rather than how I will attempt (fruitlessly) to always control and curate my environment. I've seen how this perspective can empower us to head back out and re-groom the trails with joy. I've seen how it can energize us to show up and play the tournament, even if we're playing in a crazy lake of icy sludge.