A Seasonal Love Affair

As a Midwest boy, born and bred, I never anticipated this later-in-life attraction for the desert. It’s axiomatic that a person tends to prefer the surroundings that were imprinted on him during childhood, just as your parents religion tends to be yours, and your preferences for food are often right out of your mother’s cookbook. Like it or not, we’re indoctrinated during childhood and neither reason nor reality have much to do with most of our attitudes, preferences, and prejudices.

But my indoctrination to Midwest lush green summers and white frozen winters has faded away in the last few years. Driven by the invention of the wheel and the innovation of putting several of them under your house, adding a motor, and being able to move from one place to another at will, a nomad with a calendar can seek out an optimal environment for living. Perfect all-the-time places only exist in fiction, so to maximize enjoyment one must move once in a while.

Not yet strong or tough enough to sample the desert in the summer, I have fallen in love with her for the winter. The day-long low angle of sunlight and the resulting vistas of popping color, shapes, and shadows; varied landscape reliefs; cool dry air (but warm by Midwest winter standards); unusual interesting plant life; burrowed and sleeping snakes (not a fan of snakes); vast expanses of public lands; and a proper shortage of other people… these are the things I’ve come to love in her.

As so often happens to lovers, the affair is intense but short-lived. Flirtations from other temptresses are noticed… then felt… and eventually lure the fickle nomad to stray. That, and the knowledge that your seasonal desert mistress is going to turn into a hot bitch, too hot to handle, as she does every year, mean it’s time to move on.

But I know, deep down, I’ll be back again. That “feeling” never seems to dissipate completely.

October 21 - Does Warmth Equate to Happiness?

The annual migration of snowbirds, winter Texans, and other ice-o-phobes is well underway, with the most senior of our RVing elders leading the way south. I'm not sure why, but it does seem that the more mature of the lot has an innate need to head south earlier every year. At first they were fine with leaving in November, maybe even after Thanksgiving. But as the years tick off, they're soon leaving in early October. They're a co-dependent pack who look for support in their peer-group... a mutual revulsion society that shuns anything less than 80f degree temps and bright sunshine... and any mention of words like freeze, snow, sleet... well, they go into shock and may need a respirator to survive. Added to all that, there's also the side-effect of a lingering residual competitiveness that drives them to be the first at whatever they do... first to arrive, first to leave, first to bed... you get the idea. You gotta love old folks... they're so predictable.

Easy travel to warmer latitudes helps knock environmental extremes off the human experience. But at what cost? Are folks who live in the tropics happier than those in northern latitudes? Maybe because I'm from the northern latitudes I've come to appreciate the seasons... full seasons, complete with some "nasty" weather and extremes in temperature. I can't think of a pleasure more extreme than thawing out frozen toes in front of a roaring fireplace, mug of hot chocolate in hand. It's a pleasure unlike any other... and one that won't be experienced by most escapees to the south.

We're still in Wisconsin, and it's almost November. As the law of averages dictates, our recent warm fall weather is giving way this week to a blast of near winter-like conditions... low 40s for highs and 20s for lows. And I'm looking forward to it. Can you imagine how good the next sunny and mild 50f degree day will seem?.. how happy I'll be?