I've Been Colder Than This
2025 has been a rough year. In the last six months, I've lost my dad, my dog, and now my job. I'm not one to wallow and bellyache, but even for me, this is a lot. Keeping myself mentally above water is a challenge. I have a reminder, a phrase I say to myself when things are hard: “I’ve been colder than this.”
I grew up in northern Michigan, where having a foot of snow on the ground by early November was a normal and expected thing (not so common now, thanks to climate change). I spent as much time as I could outside, even in the winter. When I was nine I had a paper route, which meant delivering newspapers seven days a week no matter what the weather was doing. Honestly, I loved it. I didn't care or concentrate on the money, tiny as it was; I saw the route as an excuse to be out in the snow.
I had a custom wood ice fishing sled my dad and I found at a garage sale that was perfect for holding all my papers. It was a wooden box with a hinged lid, sitting on top of steel runners, with a long looped rope to pull it. We attached a "hot seat" on top—a round cushion made for hunters, filled with a foam that reflected heat and literally warmed up when you sat on it. The sled also had enough room for my grandpa's large Stanley thermos full of hot cocoa (Stanleys are super popular again, which is pretty funny to me). I dressed warm, had good boots and gloves, and had hot cocoa and an always-warm seat to sit on when I wanted a break. It was a great setup even in the dark (sunset was as early as 4:30 PM in the winter) when the wind and snow were wild.
Even though I was in my element, there were days when the cold was tough to bear. Double digits below zero, wind strong enough to push you over, and sometimes even thundersnow. There was a day or two when no amount of cocoa or boot warmers was enough, and my long walk through neighborhoods for several hours got to me. My toes were numb, my hands hurt, I ran out of cocoa, and the snow was so deep the sled's runners sank and the box just plowed snow in front of it. I was very, very cold. But, as a winter-loving kid, I had also taken a winter survival course. I knew to watch for signs of hypothermia, how to keep my tingling toes from turning to frostbite, and that pushing ahead to get home—in an era before cell phones—was my only option. No one would be coming for me. There was no way to ask for help or a ride home. I had to just keep going.
I was also into ice fishing with my dad, and no weather was too cold for us to go out on the ice. We were either sitting on buckets out in the open or in a shanty that actually had insulation and a tiny wood stove. There was one particularly harsh day on Lake Michigan—the counterintuitive kind with clear blue skies and no cloud cover to hold in heat, so temperatures were well below 0° Fahrenheit. That part of Lake Michigan, a bay, didn’t always freeze. But this winter was a mean one and the ice was thick from shore to shore. When that happened, we’d take advantage and walk far out into the bay, sometimes up to a mile, to try catching whitefish from deep water.
If you’ve never ice fished, there are some basic safety rules to keep both yourself and those who come after you alive. One of those incredibly important rules, one I learned my very first time out, was to always mark the holes you cut into the ice. It’s to warn folks who come after you that there is a hole, or weak ice from a former hole. Stepping there could mean falling through, which is a good way to wind up dead. Here’s a hole, beware, stay back, thanks for the warning.
On that day, we’d been out for several hours and caught half a dozen big whitefish before we started to get a little chilly and wanted to call it a day. On the almost mile-long walk back to shore we came across a series of old holes, unmarked, which we found by falling through. I hit water first, but thankfully I only slid in up to my waist before I caught myself and rolled over. My dad, seeing it happen, instantly stepped toward me and grabbed my coat collar to pull me out. Stepping toward me also put him through another hole, one leg up to his hip in water. We both scrambled out and away, checking to be sure the other was okay. It was just our legs, and it could have been so much worse.
We were fine, but when you’re soaked to the bone with freezing water, the air temperature is -15° Fahrenheit, and the nearest shelter is a mile away through the wind and snow, you have a problem. It wasn’t necessarily life-threatening, but it could become so very quickly. I was already cold, and now I was actually freezing. The legs of my snow pants froze solid, so I had to walk as though I didn’t have knees. This, again, was before cell phones, so there was no way to call for help or even let anyone know what had happened or where we were. The only option was to get ourselves off the ice as soon as possible. We had to just keep going.
Fast forward 30+ years to now, when I’m having a very challenging year. My dad passed in May after several years of heart issues. In August, we held a memorial to spread his ashes on one of the lakes where we used to fish. Then in September, I had to say goodbye to my dog, my best buddy and cold-weather adventure pal. He was a Siberian Husky that I adopted when he was 11, and he still gave me another astonishing 8 years. Holding his head in my hands when he passed brought up all the feelings of holding my dad’s hand as he passed a few months earlier. I ugly cried for them both that day, the kind where your nose runs and you can barely breathe or see anything through the tears. And now, three months later, I find myself unemployed after my role was eliminated. Right before Christmas too, with a mortgage, car payment, and kid’s tuition to pay—it’s like a bad holiday movie.
So, things feel pretty cold. But I've been colder than this.
How we deal with these proverbial winters is a choice. We can choose to learn that we have strength when needed. Or we can choose to be overwhelmed. Sometimes the latter is unavoidable; I’ve been overwhelmed plenty of times. But we can choose whether we stay there, or stand back up and keep moving.
People tell me it's a good time to "take a break." Is it, though? Like that paper route in the winter, stopping and waiting will only make things worse. And like the holes in the ice, you can only do so much to prepare for the unexpected. There will always be surprises or bad timing, where resiliency is the only thing that will get you home. Fall in, adapt, keep going.
