A Minnesotan dreaded winter. Entering her fear was the best solution.

Editor's note: This is an essay in the First Person occasional series by Star Tribune readers and staffers.

"Want to go with me to the Minnesota Winter Camping Symposium? It's really fun. And it's the only one in the country!"

When I put this question to my friend Kristin, I almost thought I'd lost the phone connection because an uncharacteristic silence filled my ear — wide as the Grand Canyon.

"Are you still there, Kristin?"

"Ah, yes, I'm here," came back, followed by another pregnant pause. "You know, I don't think I can think of any two things I hate more than winter and camping."

I didn't know this about Kristin because she is a writing friend, not a hiking friend. And I could relate to her aversion. Realizing how much I hated winter made me want to force myself to enter it, to learn about my aversion, to make my smallish world living indoors a lot bigger.

I make decisions like that sometimes. Like dreaming of going hang gliding because I am afraid of heights. Luckily no one ever offered to take me hang gliding on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Might be better for me to look down over a cliff to challenge my fear, rather than to jump right into a flying machine. But I knew I didn't need to conquer my fear of heights to live a good life in Minnesota.

I was born to northern indoor people and spent my childhood and many adult years dressing inappropriately and then blaming the weather. That's a lot of years for anyone to voluntarily sentence herself to house arrest.

You shall not go out — except rarely. Except to walk to the car. Except to reach around the corner to get an armful of wood from the stack your husband moved nearby. Except if you're wearing your heaviest coat. Except if you can't talk the kids into staying inside. Except if your partner isn't available to go out for you. Except if the wind isn't blowing. Except if you can't get out of it. Cold paralysis can be a wasting disease.

My family left the Upper Midwest for a while, and was happy to leave cold behind. But six years later we returned, fully committed to finding ways to coexist with the inevitable changing seasons. We shopped for cold weather gear and bought skis. We visited an ice-fishing house on Lake Sagatagan to drink tea and read old Icelandic tales. We walked in the woods during a blizzard.

Then I learned the secret that winter-lovers know. When I participated in a Outward Bound dogsledding expedition over 10 nights, I learned that if you find ways to stay out longer — all day, or overnight, or even for many nights — the feeling of cold wind on skin changes. The game of enjoying winter changes. If you know what you're doing, even sleeping outside under the aurora borealis is not just survivable but it can be glorious.

Here's what I learned for enjoying a winter camping weekend:

• Get a walled tent with a vent in the ceiling for a wood-burning stove. Set up the tent in the most beautiful winter wonderland you can find. Erect the properly vented wood-burner. Spread rugs on the floor, and then a sleeping bag on a cot for each family member.

• Bring wood from outside the state park to warm your hearth. Or if you are camping in an area that allows harvesting of dead trees, chop wood into stove-sized sections, and use your hatchet or knife to chip kindling. Build a fire. Then go chop more wood.

• Rest outside your tent in a place with a pretty view, or inside your tent near the stove. Drink lots of hot liquid.

• Using snowshoes, get your family to stomp out a labyrinth or a mandala on the snowy lake. Then make up snowshoe games, have snowshoe races, and play snowshoe tag with your kids. Go cross-country skiing.

• Cook dinner when you're hungry. Nap and sleep when you're tired. Set an alarm for 2 a.m. so you can go outside and look for the Northern Lights.