Winter Walks:15 Reasons to Experience Unexpected Benefits
Does the idea of a walk in winter make you shudder with dread, or shiver in adventurous anticipation? Photography by Marie Viljoen. Wet snow clings, transforming familiar trees in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Our appreciation of the familiar, now changed, is intense. A cold winter creek in the Catskills. It’s become my favorite season for that reason… I love the subtleties that you have to hunt out in the winter—the smells and sounds and signs of life.” Walk in winter, for the love of moss. Southern magnolia leaves after an ice storm. Experiencing the complex emotion of awe is associated with less rumination, and more well-being. Pussy willow catkins caught in a freeze. A walk in winter requires some personal resilience to counter our primal fear of cold (despite the luxury of warm clothes and the privilege of being able to return to a welcoming home). Errands Become Adventures A neighborhood walk in Brooklyn. Running errands on foot becomes an adventure instead of a chore.” Her favorite winter activity? No summer crowds on moody winter beaches. Winter may be made for introverts (speaking for myself). Naked oaks in Prospect Park’s winter mist. “I love seeing the shape of trees,”says Brooklyn resident Saara Nafici (@wonderweedsbk):”…the twists and gnarls... ...the way they lean and adapt to their surrounding environments—winter reveals a nakedness that is regal and majestic, even for the scrawniest of trees.” “As I age, the naked trees are so moving to me.” Catherine Moylan. Fort Tilden in Queens, in winter’s grip. If there is snow on the ground there’s an opportunity to look closely for animal tracks, plant shoots, and other signs of life.” Winter’s grasses on Staten Island. It’s not the bleak season people think.” Her family’s New Jersey-based life embraces the Scandinavian ethos of friluftsliv (which translates literally as “free-air-life”)... ...which they share with others via Instagram @friluftsliv and with regular winter programming in collaboration with the Raritan Headwaters Association in New Jersey. Winter afternoons grow dark quickly. Living near Stockholm, Sweden, sun-loving, South African-born Lynn Renard (@gentle.adventures) describes the low-angle sunlight at those latitudes as “liquid gold flowing over the landscape. It’s beautiful to see and fascinating to try and capture.” You walk in winter, she says, “because in Scandinavia, it’s important to experience as much of the daylight as possible.” The dramatically dying afternoon light in December at Historic Green-Wood, Brooklyn. Bushy bluestem in the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest in New Jersey. Last winter I suddenly noticed unfamiliar, tall grasses growing beside a black pond in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. A snowy owl on Long Island in January. Every deep winter, my husband and I walk along the endless, cold shorelines of Long Island or New Jersey, to find overwintering snowy owls. Photo by Vincent Mounier. A snow day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The hush of snowfall is followed quickly, in an urban setting, by the happy shouts and laughter of children, old and young. Photo by Vincent Mounier. A titmouse alights to eat seed. For anyone who was walked where these winter visitors congregate, it is a familiar and tender feeling: stretching out a hand... ...with or without seed, to feel the magical and delicate grip of tiny claws, as their owner searches intently for the food you are supposed to proffer. Christmas lunch for two, at Jones Beach. Cold-weather picnics after a winter walk can be austere, in the bracing Scandinavian sense, or soothing, along hot-soup lines.