As sweet as...

My office window faces east with an expansive view of the Arkansas Hills. In the summer, the blazing sun necessitates keeping the black out curtain closed until early afternoon. However, in the winter, it remains open all day. Even six years on from leaving Alaska, I don’t take for granted our hours of sunlight in the winter. Overall our mild winters are beneficial to my health, but my brain hasn’t received the same message.

Alaska has been in my thoughts the last few weeks. Primarily because I was hired to write a script for a documentary set in Alaska, but also because during the challenging winter months, I used to make a conscious effort to identify small joys to get me through a difficult season. Since returning to Colorado, I’ve fallen off that practice. But this morning, sitting at my desk with my coffee in hand, I found myself ruminating on a tiny joy of the boreal forest: wood frogs.

Me and a wood frog on Goat Hill May 2025.

One of my favorite Alaska critters, wood frogs are a biological phenomenon. They spend the winters frozen deep beneath forest debris. No respiration, no heartbeat, their veins pumped full of glucose. It says something about me that I find the idea of frozen amphibians with frappucino blood levels, poetic. But stay with me. In any other animal (warm or cold blooded), this would mean instant death. Yet, every year they exist in suspended animation for six months of winter to emerge in the spring. Goat Hill is home to several seasonal ponds and along with the songs of returning birds, the chorus of wood frogs were a sign that we had made it through another hard season.

2025 hasn’t been the easiest of years. As we reach that point in the calendar when people begin to rave about all the positive things that have happened for them, I’ve shut down, burrowing deeper into my own debris pile. In fairness, I haven’t had to endure war, or homelessness, or starvation. So, by any standards, things are not dire. After two weeks of a nasty cold that has kept me confined to the house, my outlook has been particularly gloomy.

In Alaska, a slower pace during the winter felt natural. Temperatures plummet, daylight is short, nights are long. It’s necessary to conserve your energy. In southern Colorado though, most of our days are sunny. As a result, I find that despite my body’s resistance, I force myself to maintain a higher level of activity. And I end up here. Worn down, shuffling around the house grumbling like Eeyore. So, while I don’t need to go to the extremes of a wood frog, I think for the rest of the year, I’m going to try to be conscious of slowing down. Less time striving forward and staring at screens, more time searching out simple joys and watching clouds.

I hope that you can do the same.

Winter mental health walk.