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After living for four years in Southern California in the early 2000s, I’ll never complain about the weather in Boise again.

We loved it down there. The energy, the enthusiasm, the access to mountains, ocean, and desert, all within a few hours’ drive. And at first, the weather felt like a gift. Never too hot, never too cold. A perpetual, comfortable middle.

But after a couple of years, I started to miss the seasons.

I grew up in Idaho. When you grow up somewhere, you become hardwired to expect its weather and seasons. It’s hard to overcome that default setting.

Whatever your Christmas morning looked like as a child, snow on the ground or a day at the beach, that’s how your internal calendar gets set.

Southern California Christmas never felt right to me. I never could get a foothold on the weather out there. It was a rangeless, faceless monolith of lukewarm air. Pleasant, yes. But without texture or drama.

In Boise, temperatures swing from zero to 105 degrees.

Now that’s range.

And yes, sometimes summer is too hot and winter is too cold to be enjoyed. I won’t pretend otherwise.

But I need both.

The clarifying heat of July that makes me yearn for winter air. The oppressive cold of February that makes me pine for the heat again. The leaves, moon, and Halloween sky of October. And then the first day of spring, green grass shoots poking through the gray and brown.

I guess I’m just an Idahoan.