Front Porch: For some, winter is a time of joy

I know someone who is just loving this winter weather. The cold, the heavy skies, the ice and especially the snow – all of it. I know, blasphemy, right?

Everywhere I go I hear comments that this is the longest winter ever, that people are just sick of it and that they’ll never spend another winter here if at all possible. But not in my house.

I have spent many decades now with that other guy, the one who gleefully checks weather reports online to see when it’s going to snow and smiles broadly when he looks out the window and sees his dreams coming true in the form of big fat snowflakes. Happily he dons his winter apparel and out he goes to shovel the walk and driveway, twice a day or more if necessary. Couldn’t be happier.

He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt out there, of course, and has pushed more cars out of ditches for strangers than any man in his 70s should, and he even got out of bed at 2 a.m. once and went out with chains to help a driver stuck on a hill behind our house (we knew he was stuck because his headlights kept appearing and disappearing in our bedroom window as he moved up the hill and slid back down, over and over). But personally, for Bruce, winter is internally warm and wonderful – heaven.

I had a friend who lived here a number of years ago who was the same way. In late fall when the days got gloomier and daylight became scarcer, she brightened up. And when the snow began falling, she was close to giddy. In the sunny and hot summer, she got grumpy. As a pretty well-rounded happy guy, Bruce enjoys all the seasons, but for him there’s something special about seeing your breath out in the chilly air. And skiing, total bliss.

What’s with these people?

Hygge (pronounced: hoo-guh), that’s what. Hygge is a Danish term that has no precise translation into English but refers to a kind of coziness and togetherness, a sense of well-being. As the Oxford Dictionaries were selecting from a short list of words of the year for 2016 (finally settling on post-truth), hygge was one of the finalists. Typically hygge – which can be a verb, adjective or noun – is associated with relaxation and gratitude, like wrapping up in a quilt with a hot cup of cocoa after coming in from the cold.

The Danes, I should point out, are often ranked as the happiest people on earth, as they were again in 2016. Norway and Sweden have received that honor in years passed. These northern-tier countries are populated by a bunch of generally happy people who not only tolerate winter but have come up with strategies for embracing it.

Psychologists who write about such things note that winter is the most hygge time of the year. Apparently the season somehow brings out all this good feeling and hygge-ness in them. In the book “The Little Book of Hygge,” a story is recounted about friends sipping mulled wine around a fireplace after a hike in the snow. The question is asked if that moment could possibly be any more hygge. One person in the snuggled-up group responded that yes it could, if there were a winter storm blustering outside.

I have mentioned before and it bears repeating here that while I’ve lived in Spokane for a long time now, I grew up in Miami. I long ago adjusted to and appreciate life in the Inland Northwest but have fallen decidedly short of winter worship.

Trouble is, in Florida I met, fell in love with and married what was probably the only Alaskan in the state at the time. For years my mother wondered how that could have happened to her only child.

Bruce grew up in pre-statehood Alaska, with the Chugach Mountains in his backyard and room to roam and explore, delights for a boy who loves the outdoors. In order to be outside up there, one has to make peace with the cold, the snow and long days with little daylight (offset in summer by long days with lots of light and mosquitoes bigger and in greater abundance than I’ve seen anywhere else, and I’ve been in the Everglades). He grew up with a sled dog team, taking the dogs out daily for runs, and racing them in the winter. He skied and snowshoed and spent a lot of hours just exploring in the mountains.

And so he emerged a hygge-nated man. I have to blame his parents, I suppose, for letting him get imprinted on snow, letting him play in it and explore a world covered in white. And as for me, I guess the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine wanted him.

And so I have made peace with his exuberant joy at winter. And I am being rewarded for my sacrifices – spring begins in just four days.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net.