The Vanishing Experience of Winter

The thaw happening as I write

There’s steam rolling off the parking lot as I write. Though the air temperature is only 14 degrees fahrenheit, well below freezing, a mostly sunny sky has warmed the pavement sufficiently to cause last night’s thin, fluffy snow to melt faster than it can run off. Because the snowmelt is warmer than the surrounding air, it’s evaporating rapidly, greeting the kind of steam sometimes photographed rolling off sultry Louisiana bayous.

The last few Nebraska winters have been largely mild. I’ve only needed to shovel my walk once this year and, this late in February, the chance of another big ass-kicking snowfall is pretty minimal. Though some American communities have gotten socked pretty hard, we haven’t witnessed the prolonged snows of my childhood, where air stayed so cold so long that accumulations hung around for months, only disappearing in spring.

Winters swing wildly on the Great Plains. It’s too early to calculate this year’s snowfall, but according to the University of Nebraska, last winter was the least snowy on record; the year before, the sixth snowiest, with mounds that took months to melt away. As someone who didn’t live here until the cusp of adulthood, I find winter’s unique fingerprint exciting. And I dread the possibility that winters might stop.

Plenty of Nebraskans hate heavy snows, and have appreciated the change to milder winters. I’m not one of them. I’ve never known most forms of transcendent euphoria which people report with physical exercise, such as the semi-mythical “runner’s high.” But my first winter in Nebraska, in 1992-93, I discovered I can totally access the “snow shoveler’s high,” and eagerly shoveled public sidewalks up and down my block, unwilling to stop.

Yet Earth continues warming. The last eight years have been the warmest in world history. Though record-setting cold events like the Texas deep-freeze do happen, they’re brief, acute, and too fleeting to define the season. Even the Arctic air masses that drive the now-notorious Polar Vortex aren’t as cold anymore. Where I live, Christmas Day 2022 was warm enough to rain, once an unthinkable event in Nebraska in December.

Certainly, some regions have been hit differently than others. Large parts of Wyoming were apparently immobilized yesterday, while my part of Nebraska wasn’t even seriously inconvenienced. But even this, we were warned, is part of global warming’s trend. The Arctic air masses that formerly drove winter weather in middle latitudes like mine, simply can’t muster the oomph necessary to move south like they once did. And they probably never will.

Experts and paid climate pundits have worried about the effects this dwindling will have on Earth’s macrobiome, and its ability to support humanity. I have another question, though: what happens to the culture we leave behind? The touchstones we formerly shared of distinct seasons, of the responsibilities and pleasures that each brings? What will step up to replace them when winter no longer exists?

Despite my age, I haven’t entirely abandoned the hope of marrying and having kids someday. Consider how many Western courtship rituals center around winter. Though we’ve lost traditions like “bundling bags” and winterizing the family log cabin, winter remains a prime opportunity to make memories. Consider how many Euro-American marriage rites center on Christmas—or its successor, the Hallmark Christmas Movie.

And my children: what experiences will we lose forever when the world becomes intolerably hot? Will I have the opportunity to teach them the simple sensory pleasure of the “snow shoveler’s high” that I didn’t discover until my own adulthood? What about sledding, hot cocoa, and lazy Sunday evenings around a hearth fire with people you love? Without winter, these memories will recede into the dark corners of mythology.

Sadly, I discovered partway through writing this essay that the steam off a thawing parking lot doesn’t photograph well. I can see the steam rising with my own eyes, but I can’t preserve it for you; I can only recount it using words and language. This picturesque steam becomes a story, a narrative that you experience through my depth of feeling, through the urgency of my words. It becomes, in short, a myth.

That’s what winter will become. And as happens with myth, the story will quickly overshadow the event. Just as Santa’s Lapplander assistants became poorly defined North Pole elves, the experience of “snow shoveler’s high” or downhill sledding will become something distorted. When we no longer share these experiences, when we no longer shelter for winter together, the reality will become romanticized, warped, and ultimately lost.