1. Waterproof everything you own from head to toe.
2. Borrow a sled from a coworker.
3. Purchase snow chains for your car.
4. Spend at least one day on Bear and Summit.
5. Take a daytrip to Redlands, visit H&E Thrif  t Shop, and buy yourself an ugly, yet warm wool sweater.
6. Don’t check the weather report for your hometown, unless you are from the Pacific Northwest or the Northeast.
7. Borrow a workout or yoga video from a friend.
8. Learn three cookie recipes and use your friends as guinea pigs.
9. Sample hot teas.
10. Read.
11. Challenge your friends to trivia contests, then get busy on Google to see who’s right.
12. Attempt setting the record for worlds tallest snowman (be aware you will have to compete with Bethel, Maine, where they built a snowman that was 122 feet tall and weighed 6500 tons, or the equivalent of approximately 1500 hippopotamuses).
13. Write a song or poem.
14. Have a campfire on the weekend.
15. Learn the winter constellations.
16. Take a trip to Joshua Tree.
17. Level up so you can get a discount on SmartWool.
18. Try snowshoeing.
19. Board games.
20. Trade music with your roommates.
21. Make snowcones and slushies out of real snow.
22. Make your friends jealous by uploading pictures of your adventures.
23. Invest in a thermos.
24. Make your own trail through the snow.
25. Work on a coloring book.
26. Watch the moon wax and wane.
27. Make sure you have a valid Passport so you can get back in the country after you spend a weekend
in Mexico.
28. Joke of the Day.
29. Daydream with GoogleEarth.
30. Locate and make friends with a Big Bear local who owns a hot tub.
31. Build a really good fort out of snow strategically so you can hit your friends with snowballs as they leave their house.
32. Establish a pen pal.
33. Do a polar plunge in either Big Bear Lake or Jenks Lake (there is a jump on March 9, designated to raise money for Inland Empire Special Olympic athletes).
34. Save a snowball for July.
35. Buy citrus fruit, make smoothies and pretend you are sitting on the beach in Jamaica (don’t forget the little umbrellas for your drinks).
36. Improve your vocabulary so you can win Scrabble.
37. Touch the Pacific Ocean.
38. Learn the difference between “cold” and “really cold.”
39. Find the nearest Joanne Fabrics and see what comes next.
40. Watch the days get longer and longer.
41. Get on top of Sugarloaf.
42. Don’t stick your tongue to a pole, no matter how much your friends try to convince you to.
43. Get tickets to some kind of concert or show in LA or Vegas
44. Learn a new language.
45. Don’t stand underneath icicles.
46. Wash the dishes in your kitchen sink. It’s an excuse to put your hands in warm water.
47. Apply for your summer job and/or graduate school.
48. Improve your wildlife tracking skills.
49. Be someone’s secret admirer, then hide them a gift that will cheer them up.
50. Compete to see who can accomplish the most of these.

At High Trails Outdoor Science School, we literally force our instructors to write about elementary outdoor education, teaching outside, learning outside, our dirty classroom (the forest…gosh), environmental science, outdoor science, and all other tree hugging student and kid loving things that keep us engaged, passionate, driven, loving our job, digging our life, and spreading the word to anyone whose attention we can hold for long enough to actually make it through reading this entire sentence. Whew…. www.dirtyclassroom.com