Vegetarian Ranchwife

Ugh! I want to say something positive like, “We’re almost at the end!” But no one needs that toxic positivity when we all know that January can go well into March.

Sure, December has just as much January in it, maybe more, in most years. But in December, we have lights, I’m baking cookies, there’s champagne. Then I wake up in January, I’ve gained five pounds, have a hangover, and it’s just as miserable out.

I had a professor of Religious Studies who said it was no accident that our holidays of light and revelry come right after the winter solstice. The celebrations are a collective leap into past the darkest night of the year, and the New Year brings incrementally more sunshine each day.

Let’s be honest, our holidays are not nearly a big enough leap. All they do is plunk us down at the beginning of January.

Still, I want to be positive and say something like, “Well, at least January didn’t start until that arctic blast just a few weeks ago!” It’s true, until then, I hadn’t had much in the way of covering every piece of exposed skin before you open the door, then, when you step outside, realizing that your eyeballs can freeze too.

But it’s not like I got to enjoy any of those mild January days. The sun still got up too late and set too early. The Wyoming wind remained as fierce as ever. The grass was still so brown and dead it felt like nothing would ever grow again. Worst of all, I’d drag myself through this mild version of hell knowing that full-on hell would hit at some point.

Yes, that’s the worst. Slogging through low-level misery, never knowing when the honest-to-god misery is going to start. When we have manageable weather in January, I just want the crappy weather to hit so we can get it over with, as if we’ll hit our allotted days of sub-zero temps and inches of snowfall and be done.

A few years ago, a friend invited me to snowshoe with her. She said it had finally made winter bearable. So on a miserable January morning, when the wind was blowing 40 mph, I reluctantly joined her on the mountain. She was right, it was peaceful on the snow-muted trail. The wind whistled overhead, but down in the trees, we didn’t feel it.

So snowshoeing is okay. Nice, actually. But I’m not about to become one of those weirdos who walks around talking about how winter is their favorite season. Sure, snowshoeing is a nice reprieve from January’s misery, but I have to leave the trail at some point and make sure my kids and groceries don’t blow away while I unload the car.

Besides, I have another activity that I love to do in January: complain about crappy weather. It’s one of my favorite things to do. So thank you January, no other month gives me more to complain about! And you don’t fool me with these past few days of beautiful weather, by the sunshine, melting snow and a gentle breeze. I can hear the wind picking up. I know there’s more January in around the corner.