stay the winter

notes from a Californian who loves the cold

If you want to fall in love with a place, stay the winter.

I grew up in Southern California, where sunshine was constant and the only real seasons were manmade: swim season, fire season, Oscars season. After college at a UC alongside dozens of my high school classmates, followed by a move to San Francisco for work, my life felt like a bubble. A bubble that kept expanding, yes – but isn’t that what bubbles are meant to do?

I wanted to pop mine.

So, two summers ago, I moved to Michigan for my partner’s PhD program. When people hear I traded the California coast for a college town in the Midwest¹, they ask why. My answer is always the same, and doesn’t fail to elicit a sharp laugh or an uncomfortable pause.

People who live in California their whole lives have smooth brains².

I was hungry for wrinkles, curious about who I’d be if I shrugged off the comfortable trappings of living in essentially different iterations of the same place for years. I wanted to meet a version of myself beyond the local maxima of my life.

Since I arrived in the middle of summer, I didn’t understand yet what winter meant here, or why people would knowingly chuckle and say “just wait until the winter”. I’d roll my eyes, but still in the back of my mind, question why ice cream shops closed from December to April. Why snow tires existed. Why people complained about the cold – because growing up fifteen minutes from the ocean—ten, if I was speeding—cold meant a 45-degree morning and begrudgingly putting on a sweatshirt.

My first year as a Michigander, I conveniently avoided the real culture shock. I skipped winter for an accelerator program and spent the following summer in San Diego for my partner’s work. In fact, eight of my first twelve months were spent elsewhere: for work, for family, chasing warmer air on cycling trips.

When I finally returned to Ann Arbor last August, I felt itchy from the constant uprooting of living in five different places in less than a year. Staying put somewhere felt uncomfortable, but the feeling of being somewhere new again was even worse. Exhausted from the constant self-inflicted change, I surrendered to the slow, steady push of the seasons.

Fall leaves at Nichols Arboretum on one of my many walks

Summer blended into fall, the sticky humidity breaking through a few rainstorms. Leaves turned yellow, ochre, and red, and I pleaded with them to stay just a little longer³. I felt like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water as the temperatures kept dropping, and I could no longer wear coats that were cute, just functional. At one point, I realized I wouldn’t be leaving the house without my fingers ensconced in ski gloves for the next four months.

Through fall and early winter, I kept wavering on when I would move back to California ahead of schedule, before my partner finished his program.

"When I find the right sublet," I kept telling myself.

By January, I was seriously considering it. But leaving would’ve meant giving up the new version of me I hadn’t met yet. I couldn't even articulate why—only that staying felt hard, and I was longing for the insidious comfort of familiarity. I worked as hard, if not harder, at my job and on myself in Michigan. I was making friends and settling into our no-longer-new home. I wanted to meet the Megha who stayed, with a few more wrinkles in her brain.

The constant back-and-forth in my mind drove me crazy, and as I’ve always done, I turned to running to look for the answers. By this point, the temperatures dipped below 20°F regularly, but I didn’t care.

Some of this, I’ll admit, was fueled by spite. My partner’s family teased me for skipping winter my first year, and I love proving people wrong. But another part was committing to myself that I could still find something joyful in the cold, curious to see what would come from staying put in one place.

Entertaining myself on my TikTok

I found myself again out there, running on the cold days. The coldest days, the negative degree days. I layered up with thermal leggings, ski socks, a down jacket, gaiter, beanie, ski gloves, and sunglasses, and found out there’s still one spot⁴ that that -15°F windchill bites at.

Something alive and defiant awoke me in while I was running outside, when it felt like the world was telling me not to be. I relished the feeling of lighting my body on fire inside all those layers, while the cold singed my face and my eyelashes froze.

Sunrise in west Michigan in January

I’ve always loved California’s winter—December through February are still my favorite months. The air turns crisp, the sunsets turn cinematic. But I didn’t know real winter until this year, and fell in love deeper, especially with the brilliant sunrises on the most frigid of days and the calming quietness of a fresh snow blanketing the forest by my house.

Did you know snow glitters at night? I was 26 when I found out while on a walk. It felt like a secret the blustery winter night shared with me.

I think humans are meant to live in seasons—not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually. We’re not built to do the same thing all the time, even if we love it. That’s what winter taught me.

That’s what I was missing, in the endless sunny days of sameness in my past life. I believed I could chase joy in a straight line—that my wants and my reality would always sync up. That I'd run a marathon every year. That clipping into my bike would always lead to mountain roads and ocean views. That I'd sit across from the same friends at the same wine bar, year after year.

I understand seasonality in my work—I build tech for events and weddings, which are deeply seasonal businesses. But in my personal life, I thought consistency was strength. When those old things stopped fitting, I didn’t know what to do. It felt like a failure to let go.

Take cycling. I started riding in San Francisco, arguably the most beautiful place in the country for it. After moving, I tried to force the same love for it here, and got upset that things didn’t feel exactly the same. I felt like I inverted the familiar definition of madness – doing the same thing expecting the same results, but not realizing that I was in a different place.

My last road ride in Michigan ended with a dramatic fit of tears, screaming at the wind, pedaling into 30 mph gusts on cracked asphalt, barely moving, completely miserable. I loved cycling more than almost anything. That day, I hated it.

I didn’t want to abandon that part of myself, but I didn’t want to keep resenting it either.

I started to view letting go, not as failure, but just as a fact of life. It’s change. It’s swapping road tires for gravel. It’s telling myself to shut up and enjoy the discomfort of trying something new. I have four working limbs, a beautiful bike, and hundreds of miles of dirt roads to explore. I just need to shift, the way the seasons do.

Even now, as the sun returns and the buds start to bloom—daffodils, cherry blossoms, tiny green shoots—I feel a strange sadness. A sense of loss for winter, even as the days get longer and spring happens all at once. After months of gray, the world bursts into green. The air softens. Flowers spill over front yards. It’s dizzying and joyful and fleeting.

Living somewhere with real seasons, the way I measure time becomes tactile. I’m obsessed with noticing what blooms, what dies, what returns. I love the Japanese concept of 72 microseasons, and realized I’d already been applying it to the things I noticed on my walks and runs. Last week, the bluejays returned among the crocuses. This week, the first chipmunks emerged.

For a long time, I thought a good life was one that stayed the same—a straight arrow. Maybe it’s the American idea: if you work hard enough, you'll be happy, and if you’re unhappy, it’s your fault. As if discomfort wasn’t natural.

The comfort of sameness made me feel unmoored, like I was floating above my own life. It wasn’t until I stayed in one place—really stayed, through the hard parts, through the winter—that I started to feel grounded.

To my past self: you’ll find out that snow sparkles at night. You’ll learn to distinguish the sleep-shattering call of a cardinal from the soothing trill of a warbler. You’ll watch magnolias bloom on Ann Arbor streets and remember the ones in your childhood yard with new eyes. You’ll still miss the ocean, watching the violent magenta sunsets fade into an endless inky indigo.

And you’ll carry winter with you, even after you leave.

__

For anyone who grew up with a real winter and wants a laugh,

An incomplete list of everything I learned as a certified Californian Smooth Brain transplant:

• There needs to be Vaseline in every coat, car, and valet tray

• The sunnier days are also colder

• People really do just drink 10x more during the winter.

• Snow boots ≠ ice boots

• My asthma gets much worse in the cold air. A seaside trip every February must be booked in order to balance my humors.

1. If you’re a coastal elite clutching your pearls, don’t worry. I feel very at home as I pay $7 for my latte here. Ann Arbor is literally a version of Berkeley (complimentary) meets the West Village (derogatory) in Michigan. Hands down the cutest and most magical place to end up for a great PhD program in the Midwest. Not biased at all!

2. This is true for most, if not all, people who have stayed in the same place their entire lives. But California incurs a special kind of brainrot. Said lovingly.

3. Climate change is answering the call, we are trying not to pick up.

4. It’s your crotch.