As if I didn’t see this coming — the cold, the wind, the dark. My numb fingers struggle to hold and strike the match to light the kindling to fire up the wood stove to warm my hands.
My thumbs crack and bleed, making it painful to pull on wool socks to keep my heels from cracking and bleeding, which makes walking painful.
And I must walk.
How else to get through winter? That is, how else to winter, to turn noun into verb.
When arctic cold hits, I stay as active as possible, taking it head on — a head wrapped in a scarf encased in a hood.
Lying in bed, looking out at the thermometer, at the shivering trees, I come up with a plan for the layers I need.
Three pairs of tights, triple-layered mittens, fleece, wool, fleece. Comparisons to the abominable are not far off.
But staying inside isn’t an option, for then my insides go all sleepy.
Passing a woman dashing to her office in tiny ballet slippers, I wonder, "How does she do it? Sit inside all day?" She probably looks at me and wonders, "Who is that crazy woman bundled like a polar explorer?"
And crazy I may be, but it’s a crazy that works. I hate being cold, but I enjoy being out in the cold. There’s no mud or bugs, air is crisp, the sun late afternoon beams through hemlock needles that act like prisms scattering shards of light. Who’d want to miss that?
Thoreau, in his essay, "Walking," writes, “I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least…sauntering through the woods.”
Agreed.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy returning home after sauntering two hours in a wind chill that “feels like” five below.
I think it’s the fourth law of thermodynamics that says for every lit wood stove there’s a cat curled around it. Once I get the fire going, there she is.
I rub my hands in her fur and am grateful she’s chosen a different way to winter.
Susan Johnson winters (and summers) in South Hadley, Massachusetts.