The pleasures of winter on Shelter Island

Did you ever notice how some things can be so beautiful and at the same time really ugly?

Every winter I feel that way about snow. Not many things are more attractive or more beautiful than the first snowfall. On the flip side, driving home from work on slick, sub-freezing temperature roads, not much could be uglier.

Snow on the ground for a couple of months doesn’t bother me if I can get in and out of my driveway. In the winter cold, there’s nothing I need to do outside . But  on the beautiful side, you would have to go a long way to find a better sight than families playing and laughing at Goat Hill while sliding all the way to the bottom.

This year Walter Richards had to plow out my driveway in the middle of the night only to have me call him the following morning to say that it filled up again. A driveway packed with snow is what I consider the unpleasant part of snowfall. However, retreating into a warm home and sitting by the fire is one of the immediate rewards.

As a New Jersey boy, playing in snow was part of my childhood. We all find as we get older that much joy comes from the things we did because of the snow, including building snowmen and forts, snowball fights, bonfires, sledding, ice skating and just taking walks.

Of course, my first love has always been golf and that is nowhere now to be found. To me, finishing nine months of golf and a few months of doing something else is more than welcome. If the weather is warm and nice I always feel guilty if I’m not out practicing and improving my golf.

This is also my opportunity to read, watch movies and enjoy friends. I like watching birds and deer outside my window. I don’t miss many of the high school basketball games, which I started watching  back in the late 1960s and it’s still one of my favorite pastimes. (Like the snow, all of these activities are free.)

The one thing you always get from Shelter Island teams is the drive to win. These guys never give up and even if they are 20 points down with only a couple of minutes to play, they are playing just as hard. Without that drive to win, I don’t believe I could sit through an entire game.

One thing I’m sure of is the will-to-win attitude will not change as long as the team has the same coaching staff. I know the personalities of the coaches. There is no quit in Jay Card, Jim Colligan, Peter Meidema or Jim Theinert, four guys who have trouble sitting down during a game.

Coach Card keeps yelling out numbers from the sidelines. Someday, maybe they’ll tell me what all these numbers mean. The other three coaches keep forcefully telling the players when they’re in the wrong place or made the wrong move. Of course, the rosy red face of Jim Colligan immediately tells me he feels we just had an unfair call against us.

Always remember that a good coach can change a game, but a great coach can change a life.

Another thing that keeps me busy over the winter is running trivia contests at the Southampton and Shelter Island libraries. We do it in teams of four because the conversation in the groups provides much of the fun. You’ll enjoy two hours without looking at a cell phone. As a team, you will be answering 50 fun, general knowledge questions for which you should know the answer,  but may have trouble thinking of it …

Again, like my other winter activities, it’s free. The libraries provide the prizes and snacks and are just interested providing a fun winter evening.

You don’t have to be good at something to have a good time. Because I love to play trivia in teams, people are fooled that I’m a good player. I’m so bad that I find my enjoyment being the person asking the questions.

Get three partners and mark your calendars for our next trivia night — Friday, February 23, 7 p.m. at the Shelter Island Library. I will be there!

In the meantime, I hope in some small way I helped get you through the winter with some encouraging thoughts. The most positive thought I want to leave you with is a reminder that spring is only two months away.