5 ways to embrace winter-even if you usually dread it

WHEN KARI LEIBOWITZ MOVED TO the Arctic in 2014, she braced herself for the impact of long, dark, cold winters.

- ANGELA HAUPT

The temperature in Tromso, Norway, hovers around 20°F for eight months of the year, during which time it snows daily. Surely the wind would slap her face and unshoveled snow would sneak down her boots, wetting her socks. But she expected an emotional impact too, akin to plunging headfirst into a deep pool of the winter blues. Most distressing, she assumed, would be the polar night: a two-month stretch during which the sun doesn't rise above the horizon.

Leibowitz, a health psychologist, made the Arctic her home in order to study at the world's northernmost university. At first, she planned to dive into what was driving a surprising lack of seasonal affective disorder in Norway: Were the people there immune in some way to what she saw as an inherently depressing season? But her new neighbors kept telling her how much they were looking forward to winter. "I started feeling like, OK, it's not really enough to just focus on a lack of depression," she says. "It didn't make sense to just have this idea of why people were protected against this negative thing, and to not have a conversation about the positives."