Ah, winter. That lovely time of the year when temperatures regularly dip down below the 0 degrees F mark, when snow piles up high enough that you can barely wade through it, and cars assume tragically artistic positions on the sides of roads.

To many Wisconsinites, winter is an unwelcome visitor. Seen through different eyes, however, winter isn’t all that bad. Indeed, it can be positively magical. When a friend visited us from Ghana a few years back, we were able to see winter through her eyes.

“Look!” she exclaimed in delight. “My breath poofs!” She walked about on the trail, poofing out little clouds of snow-fog. Snowflakes, of course, were amazing. How could every one be unique? But to her, the strangest and most wondrous thing of all was the frozen lake. “We are walking on a lake,” she said breathlessly.

It’s not tough to become enchanted with winter. Once you get over the choking cold in your lungs, the watering eyes and runny nose, and the fact that if you touch any metal with your bare skin you’re likely to permanently stick, it’s actually pretty neat.
                                                                                                                             Miniscule delights
Snow is the perfect medium for capturing animal tracks. And natural treasures like feathers and seedpods are easy to find on the endless white. But beneath the snow things are even more marvelous.

Wooly bear caterpillars are nestled under leaves and sticks, an anti-freeze flooding their tissues so that they can remain dormant all winter long. Chipmunks have gone into genuine hibernation, sleeping most of the season except when they wake up long enough to crawl drowsily through their tunnels to one of their granaries, where they have a little midnight snack before going back to bed for a few more weeks. The mice are digging extensive tunnel systems, popping out every once in a while to twitch their whiskers in the wind and then scamper out to look for food.

Especially interesting are the turtles who lie dormant in the darkness beneath the ponds’ ice. This is quite a feat considering that they are air-breathers. They essentially hold their breath for six months. The details of how they accomplish this are still a mystery, but they manage to absorb some oxygen through their skin, and regulate their blood chemistry to prevent it from becoming too acidic. If you’d like to learn more about what different animals do to make it through the winter, try Bernd Heinrich’s wonderful book, Winter World.

Of course, it’s also time for we humans to have some winter fun. Snowball fights, tobogganing (on an old-fashioned wooden toboggan or metal runner sled is the only way to go), and magical night-hikes when the full moon illuminates the snow so brightly that midnight is lit like a silvery-colored noon. Horse-riding is great in this weather, when the horse’s hooves kick up the snow in powdery clouds and if you fall off you land on the world’s biggest cushion. If you’re really looking for some fun, try the Hunt Your Friends Tracking Game after a fresh snowfall.

Above all, if you’re in the midst of winter right now, enjoy!