The Opportunity of Winter
by Anthony Taylor
All photos provided by Anthony Taylor
Winter's worth is usually measured in comparison to other seasons, especially summer. We tend to view winter as something to be endured rather than engaged, especially in Black communities. But in my experience, winter presents unique opportunities for all of us to connect more deeply with our humanity.
A few years ago, I was evaluating our program, Melanin in Motion, and our success in introducing African American families to beautiful Ely, Minnesota, and YMCA Camp Du Nord throughout the year. Some families started in the summer, and some started in winter. I found that twice as many of the families that started in winter returned for a second experience, and four times as many returned for a third experience as compared to families whose initial experience was in summer. This was especially surprising because it was not uncommon for folks to respond to our winter programs invitation with, “That’s what white people do. That winter camping? That's really white people's stuff.”
Is winter what white people do? Is race part of why we endure winter? Do we all claim and perceive winter and winter activities as white, and the places and spaces where they happen (which match historical redlining boundaries, by the way) create exclusive spaces and isolate communities of color? Our program evaluation results surprised and inspired us. We began to wonder, “What is unique about the winter experience that increased Black families’ desire to come back in greater numbers than the summer experience?”
We are sure that a warm invitation from trusted relationships helped, but we saw that winter experiences forged deeper connections between people. Navigating cold temperatures together and experiencing the unique environmental opportunities winter provides created a greater experience of adventure and growth, shared success, and camaraderie. There’s something about experiencing the beauty and challenge of nature together that is an essential part of being human. Winter provides that opportunity in a unique way – a way that I would argue is not white but cultural.
What would happen if we shifted our perception of winter and the experiences, activities, and rituals we associate with it from white to cultural? Would we find an invitation to experience nature, beauty, and health in community, instead of exclusive recreational enclaves?
In truth, the compromise of whiteness was to abandon what was culture. In America, constructs of race and white supremacy invited European Americans to align with power by forgoing their cultural identities for the identity of whiteness. As European immigrants became American, they also became white, losing some part of their own traditions and ancestral ties in the process. Part of deconstructing race (and the false power structures that go with it) is understanding and reclaiming culture.
What do I mean by culture? Culture is a collection of practices that sustain community cohesion, identity, and well-being over time. Climate, environment, and place deeply influence the development of cultural practices. Culture is a ubiquitous human experience. All communities in all environments create culture. And, because it is essentially human, culture can be both specific and shared.
In Minnesota, many of the people that we now call “white” immigrated from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and they brought with them cultural practices of mobility on snow and ice and rituals of community warming and conversation in the sauna. Those practices now look like (white) recreation but are actually cultural rituals built to enable people to endure/embrace nature in winter to support health and sustain the community.
And, of course, the Dakota and Ojibwa indigenous communities were here long before Northern European immigrants arrived and had long created winter culture in Minnesota. The innovations of Minnesota's first people offer many technological and architectural strategies for embracing winter: heated floors using heated stones, home placement to maximize wind protection, creating wind barriers and fur insulation, and possibly the most important tool for surviving a long winter, great storytellers. Storytellers inspired communities through the long, dark winter evenings as people gathered by fires to keep warm. Stories passed traditions and knowledge and formed collective imagination that strengthened cultural identity.
Winter provides opportunities to experience unique, awe-inspiring natural phenomena, and if we reconnect with her rhythms through ritual, we can experience our connectedness to nature in our climate year-round. In winter, we can see sunrise and sunset as a connected progression of events. Both happen in the window of our normal day, so we observe them both more often. In winter we can watch the moonset. The first time I saw an early morning moonset during a full moon, I was twelve, and I thought to myself, “What is the sun doing in the eastern sky?” The experience was so inspiring it’s still vivid in my memory.
Winter’s cool night skies offer a canvas to explore the night sky early. We have hours of darkness before we sleep. The northern lights are the gold standard of night-gazing, and northern Minnesota is a great place to hunt them down. The abundance of inland lakes makes Minnesota an ideal region to view the Northern lights. Often when I lead Black communities in winter, especially in the Ely area, I tell the story of our ancestors, enslaved, stolen, and torn from their homes, yet recognizing the night sky as theirs and relying on their ability to navigate the routes to freedom and following the night sky led them to places of winter.
“What can we learn from cultures with a love of winter and a history of cultural practices deeply connected to the long season?”
There is a resurgence of the ritual of the sweat lodge, hot springs, sauna, cold water swims, and ice plunges as community rituals and connections to mindfulness create health, and healing strategies. What can we learn from cultures with a love of winter and a history of cultural practices deeply connected to the long season?
What happens if we approach this with amazement and experience these as traditions pulling us into a mindful mode of stillness, serenity, and connection where we can truly receive time? We will emerge transformed. Moving from the belief that winter is to be suffered through, a cold, barren, and dormant passage that we transition through to a warmer destination of hope and possibility, to understanding winter as a season that is just as much alive, steeped with potentiality and vitality, but in a totally different form. If we go towards it with an open heart and real watchful reverence, we will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to us and about us, merging nature and culture and healing the relationship between them. Winter offers us a deeper understanding of nature, culture, and the interconnectedness of people, the planet, and cultures to one another.
Celebrate The Opportunity of Winter by attending Anthony’s winter Fat Bike workshop at the Seitu Jones: Ice Fishing and Printing event on Sun, Jan 22, 1 pm at Silver Lake at Silverwood Park, produced in partnership with Melanin in Motion
Anthony Taylor is Co-founder of the National Brotherhood of Cyclists and Slow Roll Twin Cities founder. He actively engages in partnerships that use active living and the outdoors as a tool to build community, increase personal power and community safety, and improve the well-being of our youth and families with a special commitment to historically oppressed communities. He recently served as Senior Vice President of Equity Outdoors for the YMCA of the North and Directed Adventures and Equity Programs for the Loppet Foundation. Anthony has been a consultant with The Sanneh Foundation, The YMCA of the North, The Cultural Wellness Center, the Minneapolis Park Board, HGA Architects, and The DNR at the intersection of Equity, the Outdoors, Youth Development, and Community Development.
His greatest joy is losing bike races to his 17-year-old son and his 12-year-old daughter's educating him on gender identity, social justice, and the correct usage of emojis. Anthony currently serves as a member of the AARP Executive Council for AARP MN and was appointed by Gov. Walz to the Governor's Council on Age-Friendly Minnesota and serves as a Commissioner on the Metropolitan Council Open Space Commission, responsible for funding and policy in the Regional Park Systems and the founder of Melanin In Motion leading outdoor adventures for BIPOC families and youth.