winter

"After I grew up, I still hated [winter], and I think that now I know the reason why.  In civilization we try to combat winter.  We try to modify it so that we can continue to live the same sort of life that we live in the summer.  We plow the sidewalks so we can wear low shoes, and the roads so we can use cars.  We heat every enclosed space and then, inadequately clad, dash quickly from one little pocket of hot air through a bitter no-man's land of cold to another.  We fool around with sun lamps, trying to convince our skins that it is really August, and we eat travel-worn spinach in an attempt to sell the same idea to our stomachs.  Naturally, it doesn't work very well.  You can neither remodel nor ignore a thing as big as winter."

-- We Took to the Woods, Louise Dickinson Rich