I was reading my home town newspaper, the Mountrail County Promoter from Stanley, North Dakota, this morning. The editor's column told of how they'd had some fresh snowfall up there on a couple of days this past week. She said she loved the four seasons they experience, even with the severity of the winters, and she couldn't imagine how anyone could live where it was always the same year around.
Well, I left North Dakota back in 1969 and, other than a few visits, I've never been back. I have lived in South Dakota, Indiana, Arizona, deep into Mexico, Texas and back to Arizona. I note that I have lived since 1972 in either the Southwest or further south in Mexico. (That allows for people who insist Texas is in the Southwest when, if you look on a map, it's actually in the South.) But that's 39 years, compared with the 29 I lived in North Dakota. And the three years when I lived in Indiana were, I have come to find out, unusually warm, mild winters.
And I love it. I loved being able to take a swim on Christmas Day. Here in Arizona, which has been my home for 33 years, the temperature never gets down to "North Dakota winter" cold. I can remember 30 and 40 below. I can remember snowstorms that covered cars parked in the streets and even one that buried a train. I can remember, as a kid, ice-skating on the streets in my home town. But not anymore.
And that time I lived in Texas we got out after less than two years, done in by year-round humidity. And that wasn't even on the coast!
Guadalajara, Mexico and environs was our home for nearly five years and we loved the climate there. Year-round temperatures averaged around 70 to 75 degrees. When the rainy season came it frequently rained only at night and the days were sunny again.
The part of Arizona we live in now doesn't get the ultra-high temperatures of the low desert around Phoenix. So we get a seasonal change, just not the severe changes I was used to in North Dakota.
But, that's just me. I have heard people who live all over this country brag about their climate and say they wouldn't live anywhere else. I guess it's just whatever you like.
