On a bright winter morning, snow enhances the beauty and quiet solitude of Yellowstone National Park. ©Henry H. Holdsworth

According to Climate Central, an independent organization of scientists and journalists that researches and reports the facts about our changing climate, last year was the hottest in the past 135. Now, as we approach fall 2015, it’s looking like this year just might top that record.

That’s all the more reason for you to embrace and celebrate winter—while we still have it. Winter reminds us of the beauty and awe we always feel when we encounter ice and snow: whether that’s in an ancient and immense glacier that flows down to the sea; in a huge, blue iceberg that floats by; or in an ice-rimmed river that winds through a snow-dusted, pine forest.

Below, I’ve gathered together some of my favorite winter adventures. Not only do all of them depart during the winter months (if you live in the northern hemisphere), they will transport you into wintry worlds where the white season’s best gifts can easily be yours.

Northern hemisphere:

1. See polar bears in the wild in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

There’s nothing more iconic of the North than a polar bear. Seeing your first in the wild is a guaranteed heart-thumper. According to the ICUN’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, three are declining, six are stable and for nine, data is insufficient. Only one is increasing. Based on the fact that the world’s sea ice is rapidly diminishing, however, some scientists say we could lose about two-thirds of the world’s polar bears by mid-century.

See them now. You can pick from a multitude of polar bear tours that depart in October and November.

Polar bears are the poster children for the snow-and-ice world of the North. ©Henry H. Holdsworth

 

No other tour provider gets you closer to more polar bears than Natural Habitat Adventures. ©Brad Josephs

 

Every fall, the world’s greatest concentration of polar bears convenes at the edge of Hudson Bay, where they wait for the ice to form and their hunting season to begin. ©Henry H. Holdsworth

2. Search for gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone National Park is the best place on Earth to be able to see wild wolves. And the perfect time to spot them is in winter, when their dark forms contrast with the snow. There is another element that comes to the fore in Yellowstone during the fourth season: timelessness, as the park’s unique and ancient geologic features stand out in relief. Search for one of our nation’s top predators here in a season when you can more fully appreciate what the world must have looked like when it was new.

Experience the winter wonders of Yellowstone on a variety of trips from January through March.

In winter, Yellowstone’s timelessness is most apparent. ©Eric Rock

 

Yellowstone National Park—particularly in winter—is the best place on Earth to see wolves in the wild. ©Henry H. Holdsworth

 

Two bison cross the Firehole River on a crisp winter morning in Yellowstone National Park. ©Henry H. Holdsworth

3. Watch the sky light up with northern lights in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

For eons, native peoples have made up stories about the northern lights: many of the Arctic’s Inuits believed that they were spirits of the dead playing a game with a walrus skull as the ball, indigenous Greenlanders thought they were the dancing spirits of children who had died at birth and Wisconsin’s Fox tribes saw them as their slain enemies preparing for revenge.

Create your own personal or family mythology regarding the aurora borealis by watching for the lights yourself under the crisp, clear skies over Hudson Bay, from January through March.

The bright lights of the aurora borealis are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the Earth’s atmosphere. ©Eric Rock

 

Color variations are due to the type of gas particles that are colliding. Oxygen molecules located about 60 miles above Earth produce the most common hue, yellowish-green. Rare, all-red auroras are caused by high-altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles. Nitrogen produces a blue or purplish-red aurora. ©Brad Josephs

 

Native peoples throughout the world have stories about the genesis and nature of the northern lights. ©Court Whelan

Southern hemisphere:

If you set out from the northern hemisphere in winter, you’ll arrive in the southern hemisphere in summer. But you’ll still touch the spheres of ice and snow:

4. Walk on a glacier in Patagonia.

In the magnificent wilderness of Argentina and Chile’s Patagonia region, by day you can walk under the surreal, snow-covered peaks of Torres del Paine, explore the icy valleys around Mount Fitz Roy and actually step foot on a glacier in Los Glaciares National Park. At night, you can enjoy the warmth, comfort and legendary hospitality of Patagonia’s ecocamps and lodges.

If you want to know what it’s like to have millions of years of ice underfoot, travel to the ice fields of Patagonia. Tours start departing in December and run through March.

The Patagonian ice fields are some of the largest on Earth. ©Jennifer Bravo

 

Don crampons for a trek on the Viedma Glacier, the largest in Los Glaciares National Park. Walk atop the ice to safely examine crevasses and caves below the glacier’s rugged surface. ©Eric Rock

 

Patagonia has long been a magnet for wanderers and those who seek the ice. ©Jennifer Bravo

5. Float through the iceberg “cemeteries” in New Zealand.

New Zealand is filled with fairy tale meadows, frosty mountains, fast-flowing glaciers—and iceberg “cemeteries.” The South Island’s West Coast glaciers are probably the most accessible in the world, since they terminate in temperate rain forests not far above sea level. When pieces from these great blocks of ice break off, you can float by boat through their ethereal forms. The bergs come in all shapes and sizes that change with every new perspective and in every shade from the whitest of whites through the purest of blues to the deepest grays.

Take a journey among the icebergs of New Zealand on trips that depart in November through January and in March through April.

Visit New Zealand’s South Island, and you’ll be met by impossibly blue fiords, lofty snow-tipped mountains and fast-moving glaciers. ©Mark Hickey

 

New Zealand holds fairy tale, pastoral meadows and dreamlike, pristine peaks. ©Mark Hickey

 

In puzzles of huge valleys, fingers of ice extend well below the snow line. ©Mark Hickey

6. Explore the White Continent of Antarctica.

Very few of the world’s adult population—at most 0.02 percent—have had the opportunity to go to Antarctica. But here, at the bottom of the globe, what we think of as “winter” rules. Ice is land, landscape and lord.

The only living things here have found a way to embrace the ice, snow and cold temperatures. What they are able to savor in return is a clean, quiet, and incredibly exceptional and stunning home.

Ships bound for Antarctica set off from port October through March. Leave home in your city’s winter, arrive during the continent’s summer and discover the perennial white season in your soul.

Here’s to finding your true places and natural habitats,

Candy

In Antarctica, ice is land, landscape and lord. ©Ted Martens

 

To live on the White Continent, it’s imperative to find a way to embrace the ice, snow and cold temperatures. ©John Mittan

 

At most, only 0.02 percent of the world’s adult population has had the opportunity to go to Antarctica. You could be one of the few. ©John Weller