The coming of winter each year invokes a sense of dread, a learned response to four years of Michigan’s frozen and gray season stretching endlessly on. The autumn leaves with their changing colors have a haunting quality to their beauty as they foretell the days to come. When they have finally fallen, and the clocks changed, and the daylight hours given way to night, anxiety takes up residence in my stomach. I am afraid of the imminent bleakness, the forced hibernation.
Luckily for me, I am reminded by about early December that Belgian winter is a much kinder master, and there is no need for such dramatics. Temperatures sit just above freezing; essentially, a beer outside is still enjoyable, as long as one is well-layered. Rain is frequent, but rain pants allow for continued bike commuting, and at least there is no infernal shoveling of snow into quickly-graying heaps. The sun shows herself every few days. True, the days are still too short, but there is a comfort in long nights.
As a result, a proper winter day of snow and freezing temperatures again inspires excitement—and with its once-familiar sensations, even a nostalgia for those cold Michigan days. Sensorial memory catches me by surprise. A northerly wind and the crunch of snow underfoot transport me suddenly back to eighteen years old, shuffling to the dining hall for a ridiculously early dinner with my floormates, then spending the night sledding instead of studying for finals. Those winters held good days, too, I am reminded.
The most striking moments of recall are those that were new experiences at the time, therefore leaving a distinct impression in my mind. Among these, I count my mere two occasions of cross-country skiing: the first time, classic skiing at Indian Trails in my second year; and the second, skate skiing at Pigeon Creek in my last year. It’s not that I had forgotten these experiences, but rather that I had no reason to recall them, until I went cross-country skiing for the third time last weekend.
We’d had a rare week in Brussels, of multiple snowfalls that built on top of one another instead of immediately melting. With a free Sunday, I hatched a plan to catch a train to the “mountains” to the east and take advantage. Joined by two friends, we rented our skis at midday and headed for the trails.
As we shuffled along, and I struggled to find the requisite motion to glide, my first ski experience came into focus. I had remembered this day mainly through a photo that my friends and I had taken in the car after skiing, all flushed from exercise and cold and sun. I had completely forgotten that it wasn’t us who organized the excursion, but a Calvin staff member, who had also given us a crash course in cross-country skiing. Prompted by the burn in my legs, I drew the memory forward for the first time in years, recalling her instruction, a short downhill through trees, and a hot chocolate afterwards. What a strange feeling, to reremember. How has this recollection been altered by time? What other pieces of it have I forgotten?
My skate-skiing experience has remained clearer, I think, though I rediscovered parts of it too as we carved our thin path through the woods. Previous recollections had focused on the context of going with friends whom I now see rarely and just how challenging skate-skiing was.
This time, as I fell behind my friends to observe the landscape of Belgium’s High Fens, I remembered being alone for a while that night at Pigeon Creek. As there were few other people out, and I was far slower than my friends, I was eventually left with the woods and the groomed paths all to myself. It was perfectly serene, everything insulated by the blanket of snow that lay sparkling under the trail lights. The only sounds were my own movements, and perhaps my falls, and the creaking of the trees under the weight of their laden branches.
How lovely and how odd it was to find these two facets of memory again, as if they were tucked away into the lunging motion of skiing itself. Both were such vivid flashes, and perhaps their novelty was an essential part of their preservation. Just as my skis disrupted the clean edges of my friend’s new tracks as I followed, so too can a repeated event blur the distinctness of memory, one occasion confounded with another. Of course, it is a pleasure to make a habit out of something you enjoy; but last weekend, I was grateful for my infrequent cross-country skiing. Because of it, my Sunday held a magic even beyond its own great merit: that of a small, sweaty, winter-facilitated time-travel. Perhaps I should speak more highly of this season.
Rylan Shewmaker (‘21) calls herself a geographer, though none of her degrees substantiate this. After growing up in Texas and studying in Grand Rapids, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, for her master’s degree in urban studies. She still lives in Brussels and works for a housing non-profit. She enjoys audiobooks, bike commuting, sunny days, and learning new things.
