Bob Bosold and Scott Schultz

Winter likes to have its way with us, and some folks are determined to go with the flow and allow the season to take us where it wants us to be. That’s always much less frustrating and stressful to say and do, of course, for those who aren’t dealing with livestock and crops this late in January. Going with winter’s flow brought some guilt to me the other day, as I hopped onto a pair of back-country cross-country skis to tour the edges of some of the neighborhood’s yet-unharvested corn fields. “Do you have enough snow for that yet?” one of the neighborhood farmers said through his Jeep’s rolled-down window as he stopped by me on the road I was about to cross on my skis. That moment of guilt struck, as I was doing something for mostly leisurely purposes with...