It’s usually around this time of year I start asking myself, yet again, why I haven’t moved to a more temperate climate. It happens around the middle of every autumn. The temperature begins to drop into low double numbers on its slide down to single figures, the nights are downright chilly and the morning air as icy as the frost on the ground and I start to question my sanity every time I step outside the door.
If you’re starting to come to the conclusion that I am not a winter person, you are dead right. I’m not! I hate the cold with a passion which brings me back to the beginning; why haven’t I moved yet? It is a good question because when it’s all said and done, I’m the only one who can change my environment so why haven’t I?
Seriously, I do think about it every year but at the moment my current location is pretty convenient. I live in a small rural village which I quite like as I’m not into cities or the suburbs. It’s far enough away from the nearest town to give me peace and quiet yet close enough to same to mean I can be at my desk in 30 minutes on the days I go in to work…where there is a nice heater there, just waiting for me. The house I’m in is a good size, as is the block it sits on and there’s plenty of room for the chooks out the back. I don’t have any immediate neighbours and the rural outlook is attractive.
In the spring this little village looks lovely and in the summer it’s hot and sunny and the autumn days are pleasant once the morning chill and/or fog gives way to the sun. But the winters are really cold and icy and that’s where I have a problem. But hey, I should have figured this before I moved kids, pets and me to a location that’s only about two hours north of the Snowy Mountains!
But I didn’t, hence the feeling of “oh no!” in the pit of my stomach as the autumn gives way to winter and my whole system goes into a kind of shutdown in protest. I have seriously considered the hibernation option but who’d feed the pets and collect the mail? And of course, there’s my job. I work a few days a week in the newsroom at the newspaper office and typically, none of my editorial will write itself. Thank goodness for that heater then!
On the other hand, I have to admit that the winters in this region can be starkly beautiful. Everything sparkles under a heavy frost and if it snows this far down from the mountains it looks really pretty and I’m not immune to running outside to play in it! The skies on a sunny winter day here are of a blue that is stunningly lovely and I can almost forget I’m numb with cold just looking at it, so there is a lot of visual appeal but if I could admire it all from the window of a cosy loungeroom for the entire season I’d be a real happy girl! I try to do that actually, only venturing out into the icy cold when I absolutely have to.
Despite the convenience though and the visuals, I fully intend to pack up everything one day in the (hopefully) near future, say hooroo to the little inland rural village and make a beeline for a small coastal one. There are a few I can choose from and I can also have as many pretty visuals there as I can have here and most importantly, the winters will be a lot milder so I just keep thinking “beach”. I know it’s going to happen.
I can almost feel that warmer winter sun from here!