First published in the Ipswich Local News January 31, 2025
I can enjoy winter. Just not here. Obviously, I can easily enjoy winter when I’m in the tropics (cue my parents, who live in Miami!). But just last week, we were in Jackson, Wyo., where it’s winter on steroids, and I was happy — sometimes even tickled — by all the wintery winter around me.
Was it simply that annoying adage about there being no bad weather, only bad clothing? In Jackson, I was swathed head to toe in wool. I could have easily been mistaken for a Merino sheep (give or take the electric blue pattern I wore). Still, I wasn’t convinced clothing was why I enjoyed — even wildly embraced — winter out west.
On our first skiing day, as we drove to the slopes, it was -29 in the valley. That’s not even really winter weather. That’s McMurdo Station weather. That’s close-the-schools weather. That’s apocalyptic, Day After Tomorrow weather. But I was good to go. Sure, by the time we got to the mountain, the base was a balmy -15 (so really, who could complain?), but mostly I was excited because I’d read the mountain weather report.
It said, “Bundle up today, because we’ve gotten a fresh blast of arctic air. Take the plunge and get stoked that the icebox is keeping the snow soft and preserved.”
Right on. I did feel stoked! It was so dangerously cold that the mountain was practically empty, and, clad like wooly astronauts, we had it all to ourselves.
The week continued that way: dangerously cold and amazingly fabulous. The very best was the last day. I woke up, exhausted from days of skiing (it turns out you can’t train for skiing by walking dogs or making dinner), and the mountain report read as follows: “A brilliant day is dawning here in the southern Tetons … sunshine will be blazing bright for the duration, giving your soul an alpenglow high.”
I was ready to feel the alpenglow high.
And when we got onto the mountain, I realized that the report wasn’t just an artistic spin on “sunny and cold.” I’ve skied my entire life, and I’ve never seen weather like that day. The actual air was so cold that it crystallized, making everything seem to shimmer — the ground, the trees, but mostly the air. The actual air sparkled. I later looked it up and found it’s called (in rather unscientific fashion) “diamond dust.” It is created by small crystals of water suspended in the air. To quote that highly reputable source, Wikipedia, “it is most commonly observed in Antarctica and the Arctic, but can occur anywhere with a temperature well below freezing.”
I did mention the McMurdo Station, right?
Something about these mountain reports was speaking to me. It was like the author understood the deep aggravation that winter could hold and was intent on proving otherwise. As if the author understood the particular grit and grime of wintertime Boston and wanted to prove it could be brighter, sparklier … it’s like the author was from around here.
Regular readers, you know where this is headed.
It turns out that Jackson Hole celebrity skier, writer, and general sort of ski bum/guru, Jeff Leger (a.k.a. “Lege”) is from — wait for it —Swampscott.
I knew it!
I knew the uplifting mountain reports were meant to lift up the soul of the suburban, North Shore Bostonian, middle-aged mom who couldn’t take one more trash run down their driveway in the slushy slop. What if Lege wrote our morning-casts here? What if, instead of going down my poorly designed, overly steep driveway to the mess of sand and snow to get the trash, I “eased down my vertical slopes to the sandy shores of snow-drenched yesteryear to recover one man’s treasure vessels in order to rock out my day?”
I mean, what if?
I feel that if I wore enough wool, I could get stoked and feel that North Shore glow even in the winter. Now all I need to do is track down Lege and get him to come home and write daily reports to snap me out of the ennui of the Boston winter.
Or I could book a ticket to visit my parents in Miami.