WINTER AS A BEGINNING
By Jasper Vanspoore, Program Director, LEAP
January 29, 2026
Winter in the west central mountains of Idaho sets in long and hard. The snow came later this year, but I know it will likely remain well into April. Our world shrinks into the confined paths where snowbanks have been shoveled, plowed, or groomed. Daylight contracts into fewer, finite hours. The familiar and comforting sound of birdsong vanishes to distant, warmer lands, and the greenery of the forest fades into a monochrome palette of grays.
Like it does for so many others, the season often takes a toll on my mental wellbeing. Connection to myself, to others, and to nature feels harder. In the warmer months, life abounds. The world blooms into an abundance of colors and textures. Our hands become stained with blackberries, huckleberries, and apricots. Time stretches into long days, giving a feeling of endless possibility. During the river season, I connect deeply with dozens of people, and we build strong bonds through the shared experience of the river. When the seasons change into cold and darkness, this part of myself feels far away.
In winter, we retreat indoors, keeping our heads down as we brace against the elements between house and car. I often find myself grasping to remember my river life and the feeling of connection and purpose the river gives me. In the depths of winter, the abundance of summer fades into a hazy memory.
As hard as winter is, however, I am working to learn from it.
I have been lucky enough to live a life that follows the ebb and flow of seasons. At age seventeen, I moved to Alaska and began working as a sea kayak guide in the summers, and three years later I moved back to the river canyons of Idaho, where I have guided on the Salmon River ever since. With jobs so intrinsically intertwined with the natural world, I have developed a deep trust in nature, and so often when I have felt lost, I look to the rivers, mountains, forests, and elements to glean metaphors to apply to my life.
I often think of the way our own bodies reflect our world. The way our veins spread like river tributaries, and our lungs mimic the branching stems of elderberries. I believe deeply that nature can be a teacher, and that imitating nature can lead to deep wellness. So in the depths of this season, I work to understand the lessons of winter.
Today I sit at my kitchen table and gaze out the window, watching the snow swirl softly down. Thousands maybe millions hundreds of millions I have never been a numbers person settle to the ground. Countless individual flakes collect into snowdrifts. Each flake is insignificant by itself, but together they form something vast and enduring. The world around me becomes enveloped in white. The snow has a way of solidifying the fact that now is a time to slow down. I think of all the animals burrowed beneath it bears, pikas, snakes, ground squirrels. The snow holds life and suspends time.
The snow will likely stay until spring, until the sun returns and each individual flake coalesces into the water of thousands of rivulets, then streams, creeks, and rivers. Where I am, in downtown McCall, the snow will melt and run into the cow pastures of Valley County, into the Payette River, then the Boise River, and finally the Snake River. Just a few minutes from here, at the top of an unassuming hill, the Salmon watershed begins and all the snow that falls there will become the Salmon River.
I look at the snow falling outside my window and consider how, perched in the mountains above the Salmon, Payette, Boise, and Snake rivers, I may be floating on these same snowflakes in a few months. The thought is deeply comforting. As disparate as the seasons feel, and as distant as the magic of summer seems, this is all part of it. Here in Idaho, we do not have the rains to swell our rivers as the rainforests do. Instead, we rely on winter and snowfall to fill them. Without the depths of this season, without the cold and the dark, we would have no river season.
I think of how the richness of summer depends on this period of stillness. I think of my own life and wonder how periods of creativity, abundance, and connection may also depend on periods of quiet and rest. I think of myself and all of us enduring winter as tiny snowflakes. We have settled into our places for the season, hibernating and hunkering down, yet quietly building toward something larger. Like seeds that need darkness to sprout, winter gives us time for preparation and unseen work. When the season warms, we will find our flow again and come together to become something beautiful, like the river.
Winter, then, is not the absence of the river. It is its beginning.
It is not a lack of connection, but a quieter form of it.
The work of this season is subtle and largely unseen, happening beneath snowbanks and within us. It asks us to believe in what is being built even when we cannot yet touch it. And so I am learning to trust this season to allow myself to slow. I remind myself that the same forces shaping the rivers I love are at work now, even here, even in the dark.
When summer returns, we will gather again.
We will float on waters born from this very stillness.