Surviving a North Dakota Winter
Longing for more, for anywhere but here.
But today it feels like home. Because I am making it my home. Because I am choosing to stay. I know I could go anywhere but here but I’m choosing to be here. To stay. Because this is home. I will find it somehow. I will make it myself. It is up to me to make my home here.
I wish I could put into words how I feel when I sit at my kitchen table and look out my window and feel the sun hit my face and see the expanse of the sky. I can’t believe the pristine beauty of it. It is so crisp, so clear, so white, so pure. Of course there is a harshness, a sharpness to it all, but something about it softens me. How could it be that something so harsh and sharp feels like home? But it does.
When I hear the notes and melody of a Norwegian choir, I feel at home. I’m drawn to this heritage more than I’ve ever been before. It helps me to realize that there is something there that I have been missing, that I have been denying.
I want to dig deeper into the hygee way of living, the hygee way of life. It calls me, it haunts me, saying this is the best way to live. To make oneself at home. To find yourself at home with family and friends.
I believe the way to surviving winter in North Dakota is hygee. It only makes sense. We have harsh winters. We have the bitter cold. We have days where we barely see the sun or feel its warmth on the two inches of our faces that peek out from our scarves and hats. We rise when it’s dark in the morning and come home when it’s dark, spending our warmest and brightest hours inside.
If we are some of the fortunate ones who have the privilege of flexibility in our working hours, we’re able to take a moment to stand outside or walk outside and get a small dose of vitamin D. Because as the Danes say, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing” (Wiking).
However, I do think that the -40 degree windchill and frostbite warnings should be given attention.
The thing about winter in North Dakota is that it can isolate us. It can keep us from other people. It can keep us locked up and locked inside our own thoughts until we’ve lost our grip on reality and found ourselves in a dark hole where our dearest and closest can barely reach us. But if we apply the way of hygee to our North Dakotan ways, we value togetherness, we value being and we make the effort to venture out in the coldest of days just so that we can cozy together with friends by a fireplace. I’m learning that we have to make the effort. That if we wait until it’s warmer or until we feel like going outside, it won’t happen. We need grit to get us outside to get with others so that we can survive the winter without letting isolation win. And last time I checked, there is a great amount of grit in North Dakotans.
The bitter cold can lead us to becoming bitter, resentful, wondering why on God’s green earth would we have chosen this as our home? But that’s just it: we choose to stay. We choose to be. We choose to make it our home even in the darkest of days, the coldest of nights. For me, in the depth of my soul, I know there is beauty here. There is beauty in the winter. Beauty that we try to capture with our adjectives, adverbs and yet the words fail us. Beauty that we try to capture with brushes, paints, and a canvas and yet nothing will capture it like it does when we set our eyes on it. When we set our eyes on this beauty, our hearts are right there. Our eyes see it, but our heart feels it. Our eyes give us the vision, but our hearts give us the knowledge that there is beauty in the bitter cold. Our hearts know that so few things in this life can come close to the quiet and stillness of a winter’s morn, watching the sun rise on the horizon, knowing that even in the coldest of days, there is still light. There is still warmth. Some days, we have to search deeper for it. But it is there.
There is a precious beauty to winter. One that I knew as a child, but seemed to have forgotten for the last few years. This winter I’m finding that small girl’s spirit and voice that loved winter. That loved traipsing through the snow to find the best sledding hill. That begged her mother to let her go outside at 9:30 pm to sled on the small hill near her house because the way the snow hit the lights of her small town was just so beautiful, and she just didn’t want to miss it. That little girl that loved walking through the woods of the Turtle Mountains, knowing she had found her place in the universe, knowing that she was home.
Sometimes as we grow older, we throw what is precious to the side because we don’t see it’s worth or value anymore. Sometimes we are fortunate to find those things that were once precious to us all over again, pick it back up, and treasure it each day for the rest of our lives. And that’s what I promise to do with the precious beauty of winter. To find beauty each day of the winter solstice months, to hold closely those that I love and cherish, to venture outside and embrace the beauty of home. To find myself once again. To know that I truly am home.