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Point of View

It's cold, even in California--but it's not that bad

By Carl Heintze

I hate cold weather.

hate cold weather. I'd never make it in Alaska or Labrador. I was born and raised and lived most of my life in California where it does get cold, but not very often and not for very long. And when it does, I tend to think about heading for Hawaii.

Cold to me means everything turns inward. Windows and doors have to be closed. One has to lay in a supply of firewood for the fireplace--or one used to; now it's polluting to have smoke come out of one's chimney, even in the winter.

Fuel bills go up and it gets dark earlier. We use more electricity. We also dress differently.

In the winter I have to put on more clothing to keep warm--not that I am opposed to clothing, but the more one wears the more one's movements are impeded. Who, for instance, ever heard of an Eskimo running a marathon? The furs wouldn't permit it.

I'd much rather wander about in shorts and a T-shirt than sweaters, jackets and long pants, and now that the hair on my head has diminished I might even have to resort to a cap in the wintertime to keep my old balding pate warm.

Perhaps my views climatic are colored by my winters away from California. Two of them were spent in Germany during World War II. I did not have recreational use of the snow. In fact, I slept in it some of the time.

Two more were spent in and around New York City.

During one of these I lived on top of a hill in a rented room with what's known as a shaded view of the Hudson River. I was marooned there, in fact, for a week by a snowstorm that pretty much closed down New York City. The groceries were running low, and we were thinking of breaking up the furniture for firewood by the time milder weather appeared.

During my other stay I remember standing on a street corner waiting for a bus that seemingly would never come. Tears streamed down my face, not because I was sad, but because I was so cold.

These forays away from California have given me a prejudiced view of the weather. I like it when it's warm, and I hate it when it's cold.

Cold also generally means the days get shorter and the nights longer. Darkness was never anything I enjoyed much.

Oh, I know there are those who make a case for the romance of winter: "When the weather is hot and sultry is no time to commit adultery ... " and so on.

My own experience has been that the summer months are more romantic. Think about it: How many kids are born in September? Just look at birthdays. How many more of us were conceived in the summer and not the winter?

With all this anti-cold sentiment, you may well ask why I don't move farther south toward the equator.

Why not?

The earth is, after all, tilted on its axis, so it has seasons in its temperate zones. In the tropics around the equator, there's not that much variation in the seasons. The days tend to be similar in length, and the temperature is always about the same--hot.

There is something to be said for this. You don't need as many clothes. You probably don't need any some of the time.

On the other hand, aside from surfers looking for the perfect wave, endless summers tend to become as monotonous as the Arctic or the Antarctic. The seasons seem to have been given us for some reason. We wouldn't feel right about things if the leaves didn't fall from the trees, the earth didn't go dormant for a few months and that spring didn't come again, refreshing things and making one believe there is some kind of eternal rhythm to the world.

Still, it is at least theoretically possible to conceive of a world where there were seasons, but not a lot of cold. In this existence we could have shorter days for some of the year and somewhat longer nights; we could have balmy mornings and pleasant warm evenings; the days wouldn't get too hot; on the other hand, they wouldn't get too cold, either.

We wouldn't need to wear a lot of clothing most of the time and never too much. Spring would come, but so would autumn. The climate would be pleasant, but it wouldn't be monotonous.

You could even call this place paradise.

Or you might call it California.