Snot ran down my nose, and my ears burned – exhaling a wisp of steam into gray, still air. As I whipped through the wind, floating above the black-slick road I noticed the light, dim and translucent. I knew the afternoon would be pastel-tinted sunsets and frostbit toes. I peddled harder, seeing the absence of white all around me.
I wasn’t an ill-prepared traveler. A moment before, while hugging warm farewells at my godmother’s house, I had an unexpected prideful joy spill out of me – perhaps from the snowsuit I slipped on. It filled the room with heat and light as I spun like a lighthouse, blinding my godmother. I looked like an astronaut wearing a headlamp. Or maybe the pride came from her; she was the one who wisely gifted me an appreciation of the frigid Winter.
The snowsuit was black, with two striking red stripes traveling from my collar all the way down to my shoes, where they flowed into the fur-lined wide-set boots. I adored that suit; it represented the welcome I had received upon returning from college. Everything warm – from my boots to my hat – were gifts from my godmother. The headlamp was my idea, attached askew with duct tape to the bike helmet that was shoved tightly over my lumpy beanie. My garments wrapped me like her hug, promising me the ability to live with the weather, to be of it, and more than that, to be of a place and move in rhythm with that place, like two dancers.
I felt that dance between me and Winter on the days I biked in my snowsuit.
“Now Zoe, if you want to sit outside, you have to place something between you and the ground… it’s not about the weather, it’s how you plan for it. That’s just how it’s done!” My godmother told me many things directly and firmly, followed by a laugh that would spill over between us as if we were sharing something secret and special. When I grew up, I met friends unfamiliar with Winter. Only then did I realize my godmother’s playful chiding was rooting me like a tree to the place I called home. While I moved in harmony with the dark days and slippery landscape, my friends shakily wobbled. As I danced through the snow, warm in my snowsuit, others couldn’t fathom staying outside.
My godmother’s eyes laughed as she reached into her closet. She pulled from a lumpy mass of tangled cloth, the final item that would ready me for my journey: a knitted black and green scarf. It looked more like a tangled mess of wool hastily cobbled together than a chic, utilitarian product.
“Be careful on the ice patches,” she said.
“My bike will break the fall” I replied, chuckling.
“At least there’s no snow.”
As the words left her mouth, we both paused. That eerie feeling washed over me for a moment, an uncomfortable, sharp dread. I stepped out of the door and found myself uncomfortably warm on that temperate January morning in my suit.
As I biked home alone, surrounded by a ground bleached of white, I felt out of step with the hard-fought love my godmother taught me to feel for Winter.
I haven’t always loved Winter, but it wasn’t Winter’s fault. My godmother introduced me to Winter when I was too young to understand that discomfort doesn’t need to mean something isn’t fun. Mine and Winter’s introduction is hazy, but what I can remember is my godmother pushing us down a snowy hill too tall for my size, our bodies spilling out of the sled and I tumbled head over heels, with the white and blue of the sky blurring as I rolled. We would prepare for play like we were embarking on a journey. She would grab blankets and tuck me into a sled, foisting a warm container of tea into my hands.
“It’s your job to keep that safe” she would say “How else will we warm up?” then she’d march ahead, pulling me along. She always seemed to have a knack for finding the deepest snow to build our fort, or the best ice to slide on. I was often reluctant to join her.
“That snow is too deep” I’d shout from behind her. “The air hurts!” but she would just laugh until I was too curious to know what was so funny that I stopped thinking about my snow-dampened socks and instead fell into the snow and ice with her for hours. I reluctantly came to think of Winter as a friend. But even before she pushed us together, Winter was always a part of my story.
I was born during the early hours of a snowstorm as if Winter was so excited I was here it needed to shout from the rooftops. Days before I was born, my mother prayed for snow so she could take me (still in her belly) sledding and encourage me to get out of her and into the world. My family told me I came out howling, screaming right back at Winter, indignant at its demanding cold.
When I left for college, I left the climate activism and love for Winter behind too. I lost myself. Perhaps something inside of me still felt resistant to my godmother’s teachings when I went away to college. That’s when I first experienced climate numbness.
My best friend living on the West Coast spent her senior year of college locked in her house for three weeks because of the poor air quality, while my friend going to university in the South couldn’t drink the tap water when saltwater intruded on her city’s freshwater systems during a record-breaking drought. It was all too much. My friends would mention those grim stories so casually as if we’d all just accepted that this was how the world had to be. I felt detached in those moments. I became increasingly involved in other issues, even as I became more frustrated that climate change needed to be something I took serious action on. All I wanted was to ignore the looming beast of climate change, but even in these deeply personal conversations, the harsh facts couldn’t be eluded.
My climate numbness persisted until one day in the Winter of my Sophomore year. The temperature was unseasonably warm, and as I pushed up a hill I saw a bright flash of blue peeking out of the ground. A Bluebell, so bright it was as if it were shouting “I’m here! Spring is here!” But it wasn’t right. February had only just begun, yet it was clear that spring was here. I began to cry.
At that moment, everything clicked.
We don’t control how we enter this world. We don’t choose where we are born, and we certainly don’t choose what greets us when we arrive. And yet so many of us are shaped deeply by how, who, and where we are from.
What matters as we grow up is our ability to sit with the uncertainty of the world that shapes us — approaching, rather than numbing out hard truths. What matters is the relationships we build. The relationships between loved ones, our community, ourselves, and the place we come from.
Taking action against systems perpetuating the climate crisis requires a degree of hope that I’d forgotten how to act upon. Hope is a discipline. Hope requires sitting with the truth that climate change and climate injustice are hurting so many. Wiping away the seasons, animals, places, and people we call home. Community provides me with the strength to do the work needed to build resilience, break down systems, and reimagine a new tomorrow.
In my junior and senior years, my appetite to become interconnected once again with those taking action grew. So did my hope. When I graduated, I came home.
That Winter I returned, my godmother called. Winter was so cold that year, a rarity among the temperate gray-warm Winters I’ve come to expect. It was as if Winter was welcoming me home. “It’s cold outside, and I have an extra snowsuit for you. Maybe we can go for a bike by the creek like we used to?” my godmother asked. And we did.
Follow our delegation to COP29 by subscribing to our Window into COP29 Digest.
Our Window into COP29 program sends delegates to communicate on the climate crisis from their lens of expertise, whether that be Indigenous rights, climate change education, or youth voices in power. We’re on a mission to make international climate policy accessible to all through our program –– will you help us?
Zoe Redfern-Hall is the Senior Communications and Marketing Manager at Climate Generation and YEA! Alumni. She graduated from Clark University in 2021 with a degree in Political Science. After graduating, she returned to Minnesota. Zoe became deeply involved with organizing against the Line 3 oil pipeline. Last year, more than 2,000 oil lobbyists were allowed to attend COP, impacting the negotiations, stories, and transparency of the conference. She is excited and honored to join the Climate Generation delegation of climate leaders, educators, and activists calling for real change and ambition for a just cultural, economic, and energy transition away from fossil fuels.