The following post originally appeared Dec. 12, 2016. We rerun it today, with a tweak or two, because it expresses our appreciation of the season that lies ahead.

Winter’s skies are milky, indifferent. Its landscape monochromatic, a wash of grays and browns. Its weather harsh at times. And Lord knows the season is stingy with sunlight. The stuff of travel & tourism ad campaigns winter is not.

Perhaps that’s why winter succeeds with so many of us, those who ignore her gruff exterior and go out and play with her anyway.

Take those prevailing milky skies, a blur of clouds with murky intention. I’m not going to rain on you, they say. I’m not going to shine on you, either. Rather, winter’s skies provide a soft focus that belies threat. They are tolerant, if not welcoming, in a peculiar way. 

Those filtering skies highlight the bland terrain. Seemingly bland, rather. Brown isn’t typically a color known for nuance. Yet the run-out of leaves surrendered to the forest floor yields a carpet ranging from Desert Storm beige, to Crayola brown, to a sort of creamsicle orange. Nondescript colors on their own, they mix to offer a certain pop, a colorway that is distinctly winter.

There are lessons to be learned from the winter woods. The resilient beech leaf (we forgot to mention its coppery addition to the carpet pallet) that refuses to give up its post until its replacement arrives in spring. The cheerful holly and pines that retain their cheery green despite the cold. The occasional misplaced mountain laurel and rhododendron that assure us it’s ok to live outside our comfort zone.

In the bare winter woods, you can see so much more, so much farther. There are few secrets here, few places to hide: what you see is what you get. It’s stark, honest. A place of reassurance.

And there’s the quiet. So quiet you can hear a squirrel scratch its head the next ridge over as it puzzles over where it stashed its acorns just two months earlier. So quiet you hear a breeze rustle the distant tree tops minutes before it brushes your cheek. So quiet you can hear yourself think.

When we dream of our dream hike, we picture a mountain meadow dotted with wildflowers backdropped against the bluest of skies. We picture ourself laying in the midst of this idyll, head propped on our daypack, cap pulled over our eyes, arms crossed over our chest in the international prone display of contentment. It is, alas, a scene that rarely meets expectations.

Unlike a day in the winter woods, a day that rarely disappoints.