As the days grow colder and the daylight hours shorten, everyone must find winter-friendly ways to spend their time. From hitting the snow to ski or snowshoe to indoor options such as knitting or reading by the fire, Middlebury College staff have a whole host of activities in their winter routine.
Many students are attracted to the college because of its unique access to the outdoors, and some even remain in the area after graduation, continuing to participate in activities they came to love as students. Mikaela Taylor ’15.5, the Special Collections Public Services and Outreach Specialist at the Davis Family Library, is one of these Middlebury graduates that chose to stick around.
Taylor did not, however, grow up participating in the winter activities popular at the college. A Houston, Texas native, Taylor did not experience snow until becoming a Middlebury student. Now, after 12 years of living in Vermont, her favorite winter activities are downhill and nordic skiing.
According to Taylor, it took until after she graduated to fully realize her love for skiing.“The first time I tried skiing during orientation, I ran into a tree on my first time down the hill, and that kind of scared me off for a while,” she told The Campus.
However, she mustered up the courage to try again for the Ski Down during her graduation, and it has since become one of her favorite winter activities. She enjoys skiing at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, which she described as a wonderful community resource.
Taylor’s introduction to cross-country skiing on the other hand began with a rather calmer J-Term physical education class at the Rikert Nordic Center. While she loves to ski at Rikert, Taylor said she also enjoys skiing at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course when there is enough snow for its convenient proximity to the college.
Taylor’s favorite part of cross-country skiing is the peacefulness and beauty of nature. It is not only good exercise, but also a meditative activity that she said mirrors the enjoyment she gets out of hiking.
“Even at Rikert, having been there many times, I still feel like I get to explore different areas and see new things,” Taylor added. “That’s where I really learned to embrace winter.”
The next winter activity on her bucket list is snowshoeing, which Taylor hopes to try with a friend soon. While Taylor enjoys being outside to appreciate the bountiful Vermont snow, she also finds reading and watching movies to be particularly enjoyable during the winter months.
For other staff members, spending time outdoors during the winter is less appealing.
Kathy Swan, a checker at Proctor Dining Hall, would rather be by a warm fireplace than outside in the snow during the winter. Swan grew up in Salisbury, Vt., and says that as a child, she often played outside in the snow. Living on a mountain as a kid, she was outdoors every day sledding, building snowmen and snow forts, and throwing snowballs. At the time, Swan explained, these activities were her main source of entertainment, as she did not have television service and had to turn to the outdoors to pass the time.
While she has hopes of trying downhill skiing as an adult, Swan said the frigid cold weather and possibility of injury deter her, so she sticks to the comfort of the indoors. She attributes her change of heart about the winter to the rise in technology.
“A lot of it, I believe, is cellphones, Game Boys, TV, we didn’t have that much when we were younger,” Swan told The Campus.
In the winter, Swan loves to read, play games and do puzzles. When her son was young, Swan maintained winter traditions from her childhood, but those memories have faded now that her son has moved out.
“We used to make homemade maple syrup and put it over snow. That was one that we did even as a kid,” she said.
When Phyllis Stinson, program manager for conflict transformation abroad, moved to Middlebury in 2022, she was told she would have to find a winter sport.
“I asked genuinely if marveling at the beautiful winter snow through my window could be counted,” she told The Campus.
Lucky for her, friends who hated the cold as much as she did told her that would be just fine, and she now finds peace in gazing at the snow.
“It’s beautiful. The snow is beautiful, you can’t deny that. The trees and the mountains and everything is gorgeous. I just don’t really like the cold,” she said.
But Stinson described herself as an active person, and after being given a pair of snowshoes, she tried them out on the college golf course.
“Once you get moving, it’s good,” she said. “It’s just the initial getting up and out into the cold.”
Stinson plans to snowshoe again this winter, and even try her feet at a friend’s pair of cross-country skis this coming weekend.
For the most part, Stinson’s strategy is to surround herself with people who do like winter in hopes it rubs off on her.
“It’s kind of infectious,” she said. “If you maybe aren’t a winter person, it makes you appreciate it more.”
Stinson’s husband and children love to ski, and she especially enjoys the value of the Snow Bowl, where her son is part of the Middlebury Ski Club.
“The Snow Bowl is great,” she said. “It’s an amazing resource for everybody: the community, the college, it’s like a community pool in other places. I don’t go and use it, but I’m really happy it’s there for all the people I love.”
If Swan’s discovery of alpine and nordic skiing, Taylor’s love for cozying up indoors and Stinson’s experiments with snowshoeing are any indication, it is never too late for people to try new winter activities.
