Late December is when I usually start dreaming about traveling to a warm and sunny place. I get jealous of friends with reservations for trips to Florida and tickets for Caribbean cruises, and I start checking our bank account and the calendar to see if there’s any way we can manage a quick trip somewhere south over a long weekend in January or the February school break.
But this year is different. I don’t feel like I need an escape from winter this year. I feel like I need an escape TO winter.
I live in what is normally a chilly part of the country from mid-October on. But this year, a week before Christmas, it was so warm out that I didn’t need to wear socks. My younger son walked to his basketball game wearing nothing but shorts and a sleeveless jersey, and for once I didn’t worry that the neighbors would think badly of me for letting him out of the house underdressed. My older son was supposed to go on a ski trip with his high school, but it was cancelled. Ski resorts don’t need snow falling from the sky any more — they can make the snow just fine — but when the air temperature is in the 60s, even manmade snow doesn’t stand a chance. All of which leads me to wonder, who cancelled winter?
And so when I start thinking about taking the family away for a few days, I don’t find myself fantasizing about jetting off to San Juan to trade in my boots for flip-flops. Instead I find myself wondering if we should go to Alaska, to see the Northern Lights. I’m not dreaming about lying by a pool right now; I’m wondering if the kids will get a chance to use their sleds this year. I’m not jealous of friends heading to Jamaica. I’m jealous of the colleague at work who’s spending Christmas in snowy Door County, Wis., and the one who just came back from a wintry lodge in Alberta, Canada.
Of course I know the weather is fickle. By the time you read this, the Northeast, where I live, could be hit by freezing temperatures and a blizzard. On the other hand, the earth appears to be sick and running a temperature. Even if we finally get the cold weather we expect this time of year, the overall trend is for warmer winters. Austria’s Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics announced earlier this month that global warming has driven temperatures in the Alps to their highest in 1,300 years. In the U.S., ski resorts in the Northeast that hoped to open by Thanksgiving had to push their starting days well into December. Smugglers’ Notch in Vermont is playing up its indoor pools, hot tub and mini-golf because conditions on the slopes were still spotty a week before Christmas.
All this makes me nostalgic for the cold weather that I usually dream about leaving behind. So when I heard about a winter festival in Maine in February that just happens to fall when the kids are out of school, I realized it was exactly what I needed as an antidote to all this warm air. The organizers promise sled-dog rides, cross-country skiing and even ice-fishing. I mentioned it to my husband and our boys, and they all agreed that we should go.
I penciled it in on the calendar and later, in talking to my 9-year-old son, I described the frozen lake up in Maine that all the activities are planned around. But he expressed concern for something I hadn’t really thought of.
“What if the ice isn’t frozen enough,” he said, “and we fall in?”
I said I was sure that the people organizing the festival would be careful enough to test the ice before letting us go on it.
But his question made me think I better pack my sneakers along with my boots, just in case our winter getaway turns out to be just as balmy as the warm weather we’d hoped to escape.
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This week’s advice:
If mild winter weather leaves you longing for a chill, plan a trip heading north instead of south this year. In Maine, Sebago Lake will host a WinterFest & Derby, Feb. 23-25. Scheduled activities include an ice fishing tournament called the Togue Tourney; ice skating; dog sled rides and a Snowmobile Speedrun. The Point Sebago Resort will be the central location for festivities. For more information, visit .
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Questions or comments: bharpaz@ap.org.
