Every conversation with someone from elsewhere reaches the same turn. They ask how we stand it. We laugh, we deploy the joke about the wind chill, and we concede the point we were never actually asked to concede.

I would like to stop doing this.

Winter here is not a hardship to be endured between the good months. It is the season that gives this city its actual character, and the evidence is everywhere for anyone willing to look at it directly.

Consider what the cold produces. A public culture built around indoor spaces — libraries, theaters, museums, coffee shops, saunas, gymnasiums — that a city with a pleasant climate never needs to build. Minneapolis has more theater seats per capita than any American city but one, and it is not because we are unusually artistic. It is because for five months, we need somewhere to go.

Consider what it does to neighbors. There is no social technology more effective than a stuck car. I have met more of the people on my block through shoveling, jumping batteries and pushing sedans out of unplowed alleys than through any summer gathering.

Consider the lakes in January, which are the only time a city of this size gives its residents a free, flat, silent expanse the size of a neighborhood to walk across. People ski on them. People skate on them. People put small wooden buildings on them and sit inside for hours, catching very little.

None of this happens in a temperate climate, because none of it needs to.

I am aware of the counterarguments and I do not dismiss them. Winter is genuinely dangerous for people without housing, and each year the city's cold-weather response is inadequate in ways that are entirely a policy choice. Winter is isolating for the elderly. Ice falls are a leading cause of injury here and the sidewalk enforcement regime is a joke.

These are arguments for managing winter better, not for resenting it.

What worries me more is that we may be losing the version worth defending. The deep, reliable, sustained cold is arriving later and breaking more often. Thaw-refreeze cycles that were once unusual now punctuate every January, and a season of ice is worse in every respect than a season of snow.

We spent a century learning to live gracefully in a cold place. The climate is now rewriting the terms. I suspect we will miss the thing we spent all those years apologizing for.