I’m not one to shy away from winter. I appreciate a fierce snowstorm or two (though Boston’s winter may be a bit much even for me)—the scrape of shovel against cement, icicles hanging like stalactites from the gutter, my fleece hat pulled low over my ears. But as January gives way to February, and the relentless Nebraska wind blows hard into the early days of March, I grow weary of the soot-smeared snow, the days unfurling gray, one into the next.