Winter Time.

Winter is a long cold time here in the frigid Northeastern United States. After you few years spent in the winter here, you can see why people are moving out of New York left and right – it’s the winters plus the unfriendly enforcement-first culture that dominates politics. Many cold blustery days, road salt encrusting everything, high heating bills, and slippery sidewalks for months on end. Fortunately, climate change has made the winters a bit less severe but they aren’t going away tomorrow.

I plan to tough it through another winter. I have warm gear, and I don’t mind winter camping, but the snow makes it hard to be back to the remote campsites I like to camp in the winter. Colder temperatures are tough on all the gear, and the the many gray and short days of winter aren’t much fun. It’s not too bad in the sense that it’s often one of the busiest times of year at work for me, so I can focus on the long days at work, and then relax on the weekends at home, just going for short walks down to the library or other places.

Staying close to home, I tend to save more money in the winter then the summer, despite the higher heating bills. I try to get keep the heat down low in the winter, so it really only adds $40-50 to my utility bills, which is easily offset by not taking trips and burning through gasoline, food and supplies. I try to live fairly modestly in the winter, so I can have enough money saved up for trips come the summer. Nothing beats a hot weekend out at the potholers or other Adirondack swimming hole.

The cold and blowing snow will certainly come to an end. They’ll stop spreading salt on the roads, the ice will melt. And maybe it will it be an early spring. One can hope.