Spring Fever? SPRING FEVER?
I was at a holiday party, mere weeks after the winter solstice, when I first heard those words muttered. Spring? What about winter? We hadn’t even had one at that point — and by many measures still haven’t.
This global-warming business is giving me winter fever, and judging by the fact that they had to call in law enforcement to direct traffic at Eldora Mountain Resort after a recent snowfall, I’m not the only one.
Sure, we skiers get it the worst: staring at blue skies, longing for clouds, clogging Interstate 70 when anything more than a “trace” falls on the slopes and turning lodges into support groups for snow junkies.
A skier since I was 2, I’m compulsive about getting my skiing fix. The time I took my 10-day-old baby up skiing (my husband came too, to watch her in the lodge) and got stranded in a blizzard comes to mind. (A baby who happens to be named Neve, which is “snow” in Italian.) But there are plenty of folks out there who have it worse for the white stuff than I do.
There was the gentleman I shared a chairlift ride with whose wife doesn’t ski — but he does, every Saturday and Sunday. “It causes a lot of tension in our marriage, but it’s only five months out of the year, tops,” was his comment. I see his point; I mean, that’s not even half the year that he’s gone every weekend.
In our defense, it’s not just about the skiing but the chance to get out into the most beautiful places in our state. I gravitate toward expert terrain — not for just the pitch but the peace.
Runs like Trestle at Mary Jane are so quiet you can hear the songs of winter birds and the chattering of squirrels. You can smell the freshness of pine trees, especially when wetted with fresh fallen snow. You can look out across the mountain tops and realize how lucky you are to call this state home.
In a recent article, Time magazine heralded the “End of Winter,” citing the fact that since 1980, nearly every year has seen annual average temperatures higher than the long-term average.
I find the warming of winter both alarming and downright sad. When we had temps in the 50s or higher for 17 days in January, I took issue with people talking about the “beautiful weather.” Shorts in January is just wrong. Beautiful in January is a thick blanket of white sparkling in the cold, covering up the dry, dormant grass and forming a frosty fringe on bare branches.
I was born and raised in Colorado; winter is in my blood. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of sledding the hill behind our house at night. With only moonlight to guide us, my brother and I would try to steer around the yucca and rocks. Even failure was fun, landing us sprawled out on the snow, laughing beneath the stars.
Nothing is better than playing in the snow. My daughters woke to snow on the first day of winter break and were in such a rush to get outside that their nightgowns were sticking out of the top of their snowpants as they dug in the drifts.
So raise a cup of cocoa to winter, and enjoy every season in its time. When spring arrives in a month, I’ll be one of the first looking for tulips, crocuses and daffodils in my yard — I just hope their bright-green stems are pushing up through a blanket of melting snow.
Freelance travel writer and Fort Collins resident Chryss Cada is an adjunct professor of journalism at Colorado State University. She can be found on the Web at and .
