I must be getting old. I’m feeling the cold this morning – more than, I think, usual. Checking the facts – a popular pastime these days – it was 9˚ when I woke up and stoked the fire. That qualifies as bloody cold. We like to say things like, “It dropped into the ‘single numbers’ early this morning”. Insider talk. You had to be there. That kind of stuff.
At sunup there was actually some sun visible in the distance. It is now cloudy and – though my eyes are not quite fully open – I am pretty sure that was a white speck that I saw drifting past my window that gives a narrow view onto the hillside out back.
I’ve loaded the little Waterford stove twice now and the base chill that kept gnawing at my hands and knees (I hate to wear long pants inside) is finally broken and I feel safe and warmly secure in my little bubble of heat.
Oddly, and completely off course, thoughts of warm rain bounded down the years and there we are walking out of a pocket wilderness in southwestern Arkansas in a gentle but persistent rain that I made no attempt to avoid. Soaked to the bone without a single shiver. Pure joy!
Then, all at once, that little white speck is a genuine squall streaming horizontally across my window to the woods.
When I was a kid, and the almost like-a-clock afternoon summer rain shower came along, we would put on our bathing trunks (we called them bathing trunks) and went out and turned our faces up into the falling rain. There was no chill. It was almost amniotic. Perhaps it was truly an unconscious attempt to return to the safety and promise of he womb that made this ritual such a prize.
March – don’t bet on it.
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