10 Reasons to Celebrate Cold Weather

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It's finally getting cold here in Wyoming, after a pretty darn warm autumn. Many people are moaning about the weather, but some of us have been waiting to take the coats out of mothballs. Here are ten of the reasons that you should rejoice at the return of the cold!

Reason 1: Hot Drink Season
I've got a thermos. It's great. It's a Stanley. It's been sitting in a closet for months. Now that it's cool, it can be free from its prison and join me for icy adventures and white forest wanderings, always ready to provide a toasty, gut warming, life-sustaining beverage. This is the beginning of a season where drinking hot coffee at noon is not crazy; where wanting tongue-scalding cocoa doesn't get you weird looks. This is the season of hot beverages, and I love it.

Reason 2: Cold Weather Wearables
T-shirts are fine, and shorts are ok, but nothing compares to sweaters, vests, coats and wool. Even the footwear is great; the wife loves her wellies, and I have my super-comfortable boots. My waders (neoprene, bootfoot) get better when it's colder, too, changing from a mobile sweat-box in the summer to a pair of lovely, heavy, dry pants when the cold-fronts arrive.

Gotta love it!

Reason 3: Fireplaces become useful again
When it's snowing outside, is there anything nicer than sitting in front of a toasty fire with a hot drink and a nice warm sweater? The answer, of course, is no.

Toasty.

Reason 4: The mosquitos are gone
The little bloodsuckers don't fair well in the cold, and I'm ok with that!

 Reason 5: The smells of winter 
Spring and summer smell good, with their flowers and grass and running water, but the sharp smell of fresh snow is hard to beat. Plus, it's the only season where it's acceptable to have a pine tree in your home, bringing the scent of the forest into your living room!

Smells like ice-fishing!

Reason 6: Plenty of time to tie flies
If the rivers are locked in ice and the wind is whipping the snow into a ground blizzard, fishing can be a tad difficult. So, sit at home and stock up on flies you ran out of when the weather was too nice to not be outside. Not a fly-tyer? You can build leaders, or reload shells, or read a book! Winter can force you to enhance your off-the water skills and knowledge; embrace it!
Dream big

Reason 7: Pets are suddenly friendlier
Your cat that has been outside for five months is suddenly craving a comfy lap to sleep on? Huzzah!

 Reason 8: That sweet coat with the fur trim everyone laughed at you for getting? They're all jealous.
It's only ridiculous when it's not snowing!

Reason 9: No more tourists
Bermuda shorts, sun hats, fanny packs, thousands of cameras incessantly clicking; with sunshine comes the blight of summer: the tourist invasion. Want to get away from screaming children and angry city people? You have to drive a lot farther in the summer. No more, says the winter weather! The snows wash away the looky-loos, the glorious cold pushes the timid inside, the forests and grasslands are devoid of fair-weather outdoors-people. Only the rugged, the determined, the crazy remain, undeterred by "a little weather." These are my people, and they are warmed by the cold.

Brrr.

Reason 10: Beard reasons
I keep my beard all year round, but I appreciate it most in the wintertime. It's like a scarf that I never lose!

So don't whine about the cold, embrace it! Put on your big coat and some boots and go kick the snow around

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