Winter Walks

Winter arrives quietly now.
Not with celebration or dread, but with a familiar tightening. Shorter days. Heavier air. The sense that the world has pulled its shoulders inward and tucked its head.

Most nights, when the cold settles in, I walk.

It’s late enough that the streets are empty. I pull my hoodie over my head without thinking much about it, slip my phone into my front pocket, and clip the leash onto my dog’s collar. She knows what this means. She stretches and watches in an unbothered way that feels almost instructional. We step outside, and the door closes behind us with a bang of finality.

Music gets selected and starts to play well before we reach the sidewalk. Something loud. Something that doesn’t ask questions, something that lets me stay on solid ground. Smoke curls into the air when I pause at the corner, waiting to cross the street, the cold catching in my lungs, my breath briefly visible before it disappears again. The leash stays tight. My dog walks ahead of me, alert but not unhinged, nose close to the ground. We move without destination, without conversation, without urgency. Just the two of us, the night, the music, and the winter breeze.

This walk isn’t exercise. It isn’t reflection. It isn’t a metaphor.

It’s something I do because winter demands it.

There was a time when winter was just a season. A stretch of the year to get through before Spring. Something neutral. That changed slowly, and then all at once.

My great-grandmother died on Christmas morning. I was young enough to understand what death meant, but not experienced enough to know how long grief stays. After that, winter kept finding ways to take more. My other grandmother died, and then my dad. Years later, my mother died in February, when the cold had overstayed its welcome and the days were technically growing longer—although it doesn’t feel like it.

I don’t line my losses up neatly. I don’t remember every detail. What I do remember is the repetition. Winter showing up again and again with the same appetite, always hungry, always taking more. December and January stopped feeling like months and started feeling like warnings.

People talk about grief as something you process, something you move through. Winter taught me something different. Grief can be seasonal. It can arrive with the weather. It can live in the body as predictably as the cold.

Some winters hurt more than others. Some pass with only a dull pressure behind the ribs. But every year, when the light starts to drain from the afternoons, my body remembers before my mind does. My shoulders tighten. Sleep shifts. The quiet starts to feel heavier than it should.

That’s when the walks became necessary.

I didn’t decide to create a ritual. I didn’t inherit one. I didn’t read about this in a book or learn it from someone else. It formed the way a scar does—around what hurt most.

Walking gives grief somewhere to go. Not exactly away, but forward. Movement without destination keeps me from turning inward too sharply. There’s something about the rhythm of footsteps on cold pavement that steadies me. It’s the same pattern my body has trusted my whole life.

The music matters. I choose it carefully, not based on mood but on containment. I don’t listen to songs that crack me open; I listen to songs that hold. Sound creates a boundary between me and my thoughts—not shutting them out, just lowering the volume. I control what enters my ears when I can’t always control what enters my mind.

Smoking, too, has its place here. It’s the pause, the breath, the moment where I stop moving and stand still, watching smoke dissolve into the dark. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. In winter, it marks time. Inhale. Exhale. Cold air. Warm lungs. Still here.

And then there’s my dog.

She doesn’t ask me how I’m doing. She doesn’t expect progress or insight. She doesn’t care if I feel strong or broken or somewhere in between. She walks because we’re walking. She stops because something on the ground smells interesting. She looks back at me occasionally—not for reassurance, but to make sure we’re still here, still walking.

That kind of presence matters more than people realize.

Winter taught me that coping isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s repetitive. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes it looks like the same walk down the same street, night after night, because routine is the only thing keeping you from drifting too far inward.

I used to think endurance meant pushing through—white-knuckling, surviving at all costs. Winter showed me a quieter version. Endurance, I’ve learned, is staying connected to your body when everything in you wants to disappear. It’s choosing containment over collapse, restraint over recklessness. It’s not asking the season to be gentle, but adjusting your posture so it doesn’t knock you down.

I don’t expect winter to be kind to me anymore. I don’t bargain with it. I don’t try to redeem it with lights or traditions that no longer fit. I meet it with my own set of rules: walk, music, breath, movement, return.

These rituals don’t heal me, they don’t resolve anything, they don’t make the losses smaller or the memories softer.
What they do is keep me here. They keep my feet on the ground when my thoughts start to slide backward through time and I lose myself in the pain.

Some nights the grief walks beside me, quiet and patient. Some nights it stays behind, giving me a little space. Either way, the walk continues.

Eventually, the cold bites harder, my hands freezing from changing music and holding the leash, and I decide it’s time to turn back and go home. The leash shortens. My dog picks up the pace, already thinking about warmth—and maybe convincing me to stay out a little longer. The door appears. I unlock it, and it opens. The ritual ends the way it always does: without ceremony or dread.

Winter doesn’t pass because of these walks. It passes because time moves whether we participate or not. But winter no longer takes everything from me. I’ve learned how to take myself out into it and come back again.

And when it returns—because it always does—I already know what to do. I pull my hoodie over my head, slip my phone into my front pocket, and clip the leash onto my dog’s collar. She knows what this means.