Do we trust the Groundhog?
The guys debate winter and the results just might shock you
Ryan: Hey Steve
Stephen: Ryan, hello.
RS: It was Groundhog Day a few days ago. Were you watching? Waiting with bated breath to see if the rodent would release us from this hell a few weeks early?
SK: I didn’t tune into the Twitch stream but I did see the classic photo: the man in a top-hat, hoisting a huge rodent in the air like a baby fresh out of the womb, headline above reading “SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER ACCORDING TO UNDERGROUND MAMMAL.”
This has to be one of the dumbest things we’ve held onto as a country.
RS: Stephen, this is where I’m going to disagree with you. What’s the point of having a society if we can’t rally around something stupid like looking for the shadow of a groundhog to guide us? What would you prefer we do with our time in the middle of February?
SK: I can think of a few things the collective should be focusing on right now more than Nostradamus Phil but HEY that’s just me.
I don’t know if you know this and I don’t really want you to look it up, but… like… is he (Phil) generally correct with his predction? Slash why are we confused about how much more or less of a season we have? I feel like we know bang on when summer and fall begin and end. What’s with winter and spring?
Am I an idiot? Advise below.
RS: Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was going to be touching a nerve by bringing up groundhog day. I think generally there is very little to look forward to as a society, especially in the thick of winter. Why not introduce a little bit of whimsy? Is that alright? This isn’t even what I wanted to talk about. It was just a fun way for me to bring up winter. Before we move on, though, I do need you to address whether or not we’re allowed a little bit of whimsy in American Life.
SK: Yes! Of course we are. I think we got off on the wrong foot. Just because I think something is dumb and confusing doesn’t mean I want it to disappear into the ether. We need these antiquated circus acts to help balance all the really bad things happening everyday.
I’m sorry.
RS: Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to the rodent.
SK: Phil, if you’re being read this by your handler and, from what it seems, your best friend in a top-hat, I am sorry and I am glad you hold such an important place in our national fabric as some sort of rodent weathervane.
Editor’s note: We generally do not edit this and that’s why there are certainly mistakes in each edition but we like to think of it as a little humanity showing. Anyway, I was “editing” and decided to do a bit of a deeper dive on Punxsutawney Phil. I would encourage everyone to visit groundhog.org to learn a bit more about the fascinating little culture around this little carnival.
I also implore you to check out the Inner Circle which is the group of dandies, all whom have a badass nickname, that are responsible for keeping our springs and winters all sorted.
RS: Thank you. Now. I wanted to talk about winter. That’s the prompt I had for this newsletter. Maybe we could talk about some time we’ve spent together in the winter? I think we’ve filmed a few things in the winter as well? We could talk about that? You could tell everyone about the time you took me cross country skiing? Does anyone care?
SK: I want to talk about the coldest I’ve ever been filming.
Do you remember this? We were together.
RS: What a fun question. Alright. Coldest. Maybe it was somewhere in Montana? Or perhaps…on the Million Dollar Highway outside of Silverton?
SK: Trust your first instincts. It was Montana. We were filming with Adam Peterman on top of Waterworks in Missoula and I remember barely being functional. It was the wind, man. It’s always the wind.
I couldn’t use my hands very well which are, as of writing this, important when trying to use a camera. I think you have a photo of me looking really bad in this exact moment.
RS: I remember that. It was very cold. Part of that was also because we did it at sunrise. Why did we do that?
SK: Sometimes we like to make our lives more difficult than they need to be. This is a good opportunity to share the film we made from this trip. I recently rewatched it and decided it’s nice.
RS: That was a good film. A good series. A nice thing we did many years ago. All because we hiked our asses up a mountain in the middle of winter.
Actually, it wasn’t even really winter. I just looked it up and we were there in March. March 28th. Damn near Spring. Probably one of those years that the groundhog you were just talking shit about said that we had six more weeks of winter ahead of us.
SK: Shadow? Seen.
RS: Do you have any additional thoughts about winter?
SK: On the whole, I am Pro-Winter. To live through each season is a human experience. If you take refuge from the cold and/or the heat each year, you are engaging in cowardice. We are meant to engage with and learn from the elements. Wear a coat if it’s cold. Drink more water if it’s hot.
What do you think of that little koan?
RS: It’s something my dad would say while holding the thermostat hostage at 59 degrees. “PUT ON A SWEATER IF YOU’RE COLD”
I am experiencing my first real winter in many years. Despite my time spent in places like Boulder and Flagstaff, mountain town winters do not count as real winters. You get to see the sun 90% of the time and it’ll randomly be 60 degrees and feel like summer. Whatever is happening in New York is not pleasant but it does remind me of my Minnesota roots. I would say initially I was anti-winter (”why the hell did I leave Santa Monica?”) and now I am teetering towards your line of thinking: that you’re a coward if you don’t stare down a week straight of sub-freezing temps.
SK: The unexamined life isn’t worth living, Ryan. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained from being comfortable all the time. That’s not real life.
RS: How about we introduce a new bit at the very end, to see if anyone actually reads this far.
Steve, hit them with our new bit called Question Of The Week.
SK: Ah yes, QOTW. The thing I heard about for the first time while seeing your little cursor patter away in the Google Doc before my eyes.
This weeks QOTW is simple: Do you like winter? Please comment below.
On a recent airplane trip, I told a woman from Atlanta that it has been crazy warm and dry in Salt Lake this winter. "It's terrible," I said. "We're all bummed out." She looked at me like I was crazy. "That's bad? Why is that bad?" And I didn't know what to say. I was so taken aback by her response, but it made me reflect on my own skewed perspective. For me, winter is good in kind of the same way that sleep is good. Maybe sleep doesn't contribute directly to the things I do in my life, but I can't do anything in life without sleep. Winter gives us cold, and quiet, and in the West it gives us our most important water reservoirs in mountain snowpacks. Winter is rest and recovery and patience before action and movement and busy-ness the rest of the year. You don't have to enjoy it, but it seems obvious to me that we all need winter to exist. But I come from a specific background focused on mountains and environment that I guess is not common.
mostly yes, sometimes no