These Northern Times: The North Pole

In case you are wondering what my house looks like, this is a most recent shot of it:

Good ol' 106 Kennedy St, Haines Junction. Cozy.

I kid.

Now, there are many misconceptions about where B and I have moved to, and we get crazy questions all the time from our friends and family down South. (How many of you reading this wonder whether there are penguins and forlorn-lookin' polar bears, clinging to melting ice floes in our backyard?)

Some of these questions include:

Is it like.... - 40 degrees all the time?
How much daylight do you get? Like.. 4 hours a day?
You're kind of a weakbaby, Joann. Aren't you going to freeze to death and die?

In actuality, it really isn't that cold up here. And we get more or less the same amount of daylight as you, in BC. It's been a very, very mild winter. SO MILD. Like today? It was minus 5 degrees outside! Minus FIVE. In January! Last winter, I distinctly remember being a bit traumatized. I was wearing long johns underneath my jeans all the time. On my four minute walk to work, my hair would freeze instantaneously as soon as I stepped outside of my house, all exposed black strands turning white. Sometimes B would look over at me, and be like: "So that's what you're going to look like when you're an old lady." Snow came in early October, and some iteration of it stayed on the ground until April.

Two years ago, I didn't even like snow. I was that bah-humbug that would grimace when snowflakes started to fall (the one or two times) in Vancouver. I didn't ski or snowboard or toboggan or luge. I found it a pain in the ass to deal with the city as it came to a dramatic, grinding halt each time (not even) a foot of snow fell on the streets. Boo, I would think. Bring on the rain.

Now, a walk through the snowy woods just outside my doorstep is one of my favorite things. I slip on my big, clunky, ugly black Sorels (which I held off from buying for the longest time, in case something cute and warm existed. --"Buy the damn boots, you're going to freeze come Winter", said B--) and tramp through the fluffy snow, the hard, crusty snow, the mashed potato snow, the misleading deep snow that makes you fall deep into your own footprint, the snow that will be here for another quarter of the year.

And it's pretty peaceful. Who would have thought?