Second Cold Night January 2016

Fire is roaring bright on this cold winter night. The woodstove takes in what we give it as fuel and returns heat. A pot on top bubbles away filled with cloves and orange peels and cinnamon sticks. The scent moves palpably through the whole house. Smells like hipsters in the 1970s smoking clove cigarettes and drinking tea.

Outside these walls the frigid season is now really here. With little warning, but it is January so there should not be any need for warning, winter in all its artic force pounds against the wood frame of the house. Cold air wiggles and jimmies any window pane not caulked up tight. Frigid fingers of icy air tear at anything not locked down tight. The draft doggies are out along the doors.

Walking into the wind is brutal. A scarf wrapped around your face isn’t a fashion faux pas. Wool on those cheeks could be the difference between damn cold and frostbite. Not many people are out at the noontime for a walk right now. I have seen them walk to the windows in the office and watch others coming into the building’s lobby. The layers and bundles of clothes one upon the other on these visitors say quietly, “Can’t we do this whole exercise thing some other way?” It hasn’t gone below zero yet but that distance is not far off.