Sharing the winter experience with other people can also help cultivate the imagination needed to relish the short days and long nights of winter. One of my most precious memories is spending a week in remote northern Manitoba with my family and some friends in the deep winter in a cabin with no heat, electricity, or plumbing. Although that may sound cold and remote, we were actually in constant contact with fire. Cooking, bathing, heating our rooms, and illuminating our evenings all required building fires and maintaining them constantly. This kept us all busy, and when we weren’t building fires, we were gathered around them, reading, drawing, telling stories, or playing fierce games of Canasta. The nights we spent next to the frozen lake were illuminated by the stars and Aurora Borealis, unpolluted by any artificial light, and the sobering thrill of finding actual wolf tracks near our cabin still haunts me.
— Read on verilymag.com/

From an incredible former Hillsdale student, Margaret Handel.