Learning to Love Any Weather

Most RVers really enjoy the warmer weather and look forward to spring as the coming of the next camping season. Winter, however, tends to evoke another emotion entirely. If you dread the coming of winter like a harbinger of doom, I challenge you to make peace with weather you do not enjoy.  There is beauty in all of nature; some is just a bit harder to see and appreciate. But if you make the effort, you need never be disappointed due to a bad weather day. Here are some thoughts on the subject:

• You may see a rainy day while you are camping as a disappointment. However, that rain can make you enjoy curling up on a couch with a good book.  Or perhaps you will choose to spend the day playing games inside the camper and use it as a family bonding experience. Another idea, however, is to outfit the entire with hooded rain ponchos and head out for a hike as the rains begin to fall. Pay close attention to the different sights, sounds and smells of the field or forest covered in a fresh rain bath.

• Some people find foggy weather gloomy and depressing, I prefer to see it as mysterious and secretive. If you try, you can learn to appreciate the mysterious silence that is the fog and may even find yourself looking forward to getting lost in it. Marvel at how you can only see a short distance in front of you and that many things just seem to disappear before your eyes…

• And, is there anything that makes a toasty fire more delicious than a bitter cold north wind and sharp biting ice crystals hitting you in the face?  We almost have to experience weather like that to truly appreciate its opposite—a crackling fire in a cozy room with a comfy chair and a window for you to watch outside. We can learn to appreciate these days for the pleasures they help us to enjoy. Likewise, we can enjoy the time spent outside in weather like that, whether it is attending to pets, accomplishing other outside chores or engaging in a cold weather sport, such as snowmobiling or skiing, for the experience awaiting us at the end.

• If the thought of snow, in general, makes you cringe because of the shoveling you have to look forward to, think back to a favorite snowfall from your past, perhaps your childhood. I remember a time when I was in college and we lived in an apartment across the road from a gravel pit. One of the small pits they had dug had filled with water and become a pond. Every winter, the pond would freeze over and we would grab our ice skates and head out there as soon as the workers would leave. I have wonderful memories of skating there at dusk on a weekday afternoon when large, fat snowflakes were falling and landing on the ice and my eyelashes. This memory never fails to put me at peace and help me to appreciate even look forward to our next snowfall.

• The most difficult weather for me to handle, personally, is gray November in Wisconsin. I see that other states have sunshine in November, but in Wisconsin it’s as if once Halloween passes, the sun goes into hibernation until December 1^st. The one thing you can count on in a Wisconsin November is the color gray. In my work as a therapist, I see more people coming more depressed than any other time of the year. Even people who are not diagnosed with depression!

When I complain to my weather-loving husband, my cross-country skier husband says “I just look at November as the predecessor to a winter full of snow!” He walks around the house actually excited that the skies are gray. Even his persistent enthusiasm cannot lighten my mood so if anyone has other ideas about how to appreciate November, I would love to hear them.

And, finally, remember, it’s weather. In most places, if you give it an hour or two, unless you’re talking November in Wisconsin, it will change anyway! For more information about camping, browse additional camping articles at Woodall’s main site.