THE MONROE DOCTRINE: Why we love winter

We are having another honest-to-goodness winter here in the Midwest with lots of snow (about 30 inches through December where I live) and real cold temperatures. Colleagues in warmer climates wonder why we choose to work here and think we’re a little crazy to actually enjoy winter and cold and snow so much.

Not everyone in the North thinks it’s so great, however. Haven’t you heard the old jibe, "We have two seasons in Wisconsin – July and winter," or "There are four seasons in Wisconsin – early winter, midwinter, late winter and next winter." For these regional detractors, it’s a matter more of tolerance than love of the winter season.

Why do people like me enjoy the season so much? Some say it is our heritage and that it is in our genes. It gets cold in northern Europe, and a lot of us trace our ancestors to those places. But I know a lot of Norwegians and Swedes and Germans who have bailed out to warm places either to work or to retire. I am not so sure that reason accounts for it.

Some people I know like winter because surviving it implies some sort of physical and even moral fitness. They think of it as an endurance test of sorts, that winter is a real season that fosters a sense of reality. Getting ready for winter requires planning and foresight that isn’t necessary for a warmer season. Winter, in their eyes, makes them tough. I don’t subscribe to that theory, either. I lived a bit north of the equator during my time in Uncle Sam’s Army, a place where it was either hot and raining or hot and dry. Hot is not easy. Ask the men and women serving in Iraq about that. In fact, in-laws of mine moved back north from Florida because they believed that northern winters were easier than Florida summers!

One of our stops on vacation last fall was John Greenleaf Whittier’s boyhood home at Haverhill, Mass. We wanted to see the place where he wrote "Snow-Bound," likely my favorite poem. So many of the poets and writers I enjoy most wrote about winter – Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Lowell and even Emily Dickinson. So did Longfellow. Early American painters like Currier and Ives, Frederic Church and George Durrie gave us beautiful snowscapes to enjoy, ones that portrayed an enchanting and idyllic life. Their art was familiar to many Americans and I still love them today. Two of the three prints in our family room today are winter scenes.

Somehow cold months inspire all sorts of activities that are really fun and possible only in the winter, sports that we really enjoy. Skiing, sledding, ice skating, snowshoeing, ice boating and snowboarding are very popular here. So is snowmobiling. Hockey is a major sport. Big in the area where I live, because of the five lakes in our midst, is ice fishing. Entire lakes become small villages when the fishing shanties appear as the ice thickens. You can even enter hardwater golf tourneys where courses are set up on ice and the rules of golf are applied, albeit loosely.

Which brings me to why I liked managing a golf course in the north. We played golf for about nine months and for three months I led a normal life. Two of our best holidays came during those three months of winter.

Having four distinct seasons breaks the work year into four compartments, which seems to move the year along. Each had its specific activities and turf requirements; when those were done, you were ready for the next season. The seasons offered great variety in the work, too.

It’s a fact that while winter weather can be tough on a golf course, mostly it is kind. What the old farmer saw, "A year of snow is a year of plenty," applies to golf courses, too, I’ve observed.

Low temperatures can reduce the levels of pest for the next season, whether that’s survival of insect eggs or even inoculums. The snow mold diseases can be problematic, but I have seen more pink snow mold when there was no snow than when the course was white. And our pathologists have designed programs that give us pretty good protection from the gray snow molds.

The real beauty of winter is the snow we usually get. It transforms the look of our golf course landscape and covers them with a warm blanket of insulation. Golfers often become cross-country skiers in the winter snow. The one fear we have is ice, and that is the big turf killer in the winter. We haven’t found surefire answers yet, but usually winter injury is a one in 10- or 12-year event for most northern golf courses.

Winter months give us ample time to spend on equipment repairs and refurbishing, an especially good investment these days.

I guess it comes down to our personal preference. For myself and many like me, the cold and snow of winter are a welcome respite from the intensity of the golf season, but once the GCSAA conference is over, the sight of green grass is one we are longing for. That’s a beautiful emotion. GCI