Winter Cold Moon
Cold at these intensities reaches up and slaps you, says pay attention! This cold, this very chilled air now seeping into our house once sat over the Arctic circle, but slumped its ways south, slouching like Yeats’ rough beast, its hour come round at last.
(arctic sea ice)
We’re in the way as it heads away from the pole or, rather, there’s nothing in the way as it descends toward us. No mountains. No great lakes. No cities. Only forest and tundra and smaller lakes. We are, our meteorologist of some note, Paul Douglas, says, one of the coldest major metropolitan areas in the world. And damn proud of it, too.
This cold is life rejecting, bone and tissue freezing, the temperature equivalent of the fallow season. Nothing can live in it. For long. Bears hibernate. Oh, yes, there are the polar bears, the wolves, the wolverines and fishers and martens, yes, and they hunt the others who struggle. Rabbit. Deer. Moose. Mice.
But mostly life slows down. Goes inside the house or den or bar. Throw a log on the fire, turn the thermostat up, draw the down-filled duvets up close.
There is, too, another side to the cold. It’s emotional cost. Having to brace the cold all the time can be exhausting. It contributes to the desire to run outside naked, screaming aloha, hunting for one of those umbrella drinks, even if you no longer drink.
Like those who live in any extreme weather environments either you make your peace with it or you find a different place to live. I appreciate the cold’s ascetic qualities, its purity and clarity. It’s single-minded devotion to being one thing. It’s not like those variable humid days in summer when the wind can blow cool, then warm. No, when it’s cold, it either stays cold or get colder. Then, when it leaves, like pain, it is as if it had never been.
