My favorite winter activity
Dale Kovar
HJ GENERAL MANAGER
The periods of daylight are fi nally get-
ting longer again. All the holiday decora-
tions are packed away. And we still have
several weeks left before it’s comfortable
to go outside.
So what do we do in winter?
It’s a process of elimination.
I’ve never developed an interest in
typical outdoor winter activities like
snowmobiling or ice fi shing.
My winter outdoors time pretty much
consists of removing snow from the
driveway or scurrying between vehicles
and buildings.
Staying indoors, even sports doesn’t
fi ll the gap at this time of year.
Over the years, I’ve soured on football.
The Timberwolves have never earned
my attention. Hockey is just slippery
soccer. Our kids are past high school
sports age.
So what’s a fella to do?
Go back to the basics: reading.
Winter is a great time to settle in with
a good book, and there are millions of
choices.
Our libraries offer us the world, no
matter what our interests may be. These
days it’s just a quick online search to fi nd,
and even order, books that we would like
to read. In many cases, other similar
books are suggested as well.
If a particular book isn’t in the local li-
brary system, they’ll order it from some-
where else.
And did I mention that it’s free!?!
I can’t claim a favorite all-time book,
and won’t go so far as recommending a
reading list. There are so many options
you just have to choose and enjoy for
yourself.
I do notice that my reading habits tend
to follow a binge pattern – reading mul-
tiple similar-topic books in a row. Some-
times I just sort of stumble into fi nding
them.
Growing up, my grandmother enjoyed
the Perry Mason series by Erle Stanley
Gardner, so that was among my ear-
ly reading. I can still go back to those
books, and if the readings are several
years apart, I don’t even remember who-
dunnit.
Several years ago after visiting Colo-
rado, I recalled that my second-cousin
Galen Rowell was a well-known photog-
rapher/mountain climber, so I tracked
down some of his books.
That led me on my own expedition
in which I was able to survive a couple
winters by reading various accounts of
mountain climbing on K2, Mt. Ever-
est, and others. I developed geographic
knowledge of Nepal and the Baltoro
Glacier, and could recite safety practices
for dealing with altitude.
It became diffi cult to complain about
walking from my work building to my
car in 20-below temperatures when the
night before I had read about moun-
tain climbers who spent several days
in a small tent waiting out a blizzard at
20,000-plus feet.
Another time, and I don’t remem-
ber the trigger that started it, I tracked
down every book I could fi nd written by
people who had near-death experiences
and their descriptions of what Heaven is
like.
That made for many hours of ponder-
ing what they wrote and comparing it to
the Bible itself.
I’ve also gone through numerous base-
ball and running books, and a few auto-
biographies. The joy of reading is that
there is so much available. And there are
dozens and dozens of other topics out
there that I could care less about – but
maybe you do?
If you’ve made it this far, you must en-
joy reading too.
Cold snap
Speaking of winter, I used to tell the
story that one year when I was in col-
lege, the temperature didn’t get above
zero for three weeks.
Upon further review, I was disap-
pointed to learn that it really wasn’t as
bad as my memory told me.
What I was thinking of was a stretch
of 23 consecutive days in which the low
temperature was below zero, not the
high. (It still was miserable!)
Within that month, though, there was
an eight-day period in which the high for
the day was below zero on fi ve days, and
three of those days, the high was lower
than 10-below.
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