Thoughts As The Temperature Enters Free Fall

2-15-2023

I first wrote this a couple of weeks back when the free fall was imminent. What's currently imminent is my back operation. Finally. If you are reading this, I'm either in the operating room or recovery. I'm publishing this now because Sunday morning is out, and I cannot promise the following Sunday because I don't know what recovery will be like. My instructions from a couple of folks who have done this: Don't be brave. Take the pain medicine. All of it. As for the following weather report: it's terse, and a bit unsettling. 

February 3, 2023

It's so quiet. It settles so softly yet so urgently this quiet. We are at six degrees above zero heading to minus thirty degrees (wind chill) over the next twenty-four. So quiet. So still. Frigid air settles over the land like parachute cloth. Everything snaps or can snap. Apprehension is the watchword, an anxiety rarely brought on by living like we do. Will half a tank of oil be enough? Will the power go out? Will the pipes freeze? Will we? Jamie is upstairs currently wrapped in an electric blanket, but if the power goes out? I brought in three extra armloads of wood this morning to keep from running outside for more during the coldest stretch. We won't freeze, but damage could occur. The county emergency commission called each resident to warn them of the pitfalls. Stay inside. When the seasons change, when the snows fall, when the rains pound and thunder there is awe and wonder and maybe a soupcon of worry that the roof could leak, but there is no fear. The weather we have now births fear. It's like more and even greater weight continues to press down upon you. There is little escape. It presses down and down. Both hands. Is this what it's like in a desert heat wave? I was once in weather in excess of 120 degrees with no shade, and it felt like this - dangerous - like walking point on patrol, like being pressed under a hot rock, a human panini.

Normally, the drama of the weather fascinates me. I don't watch the weather channel, but I do stick my head out the window a lot, not to mention time spent daydreaming on the bridge, weather permitting. However, this stuff going on outside my house right now gives me pause. Jamie calls downstairs on the walkie-talkie to me in my office, "Minus twenty degrees." I don't want it to linger. I want it to go away. I think of being squeezed by a gigantic python thick around as a truck tire. I went outside to latch the porch door against the growing wind, took off my glove to do so, and my fingers damn near went numb before I got back to the house.  Looking at minus thirty degrees. We're prepared for a black out - lanterns within reach, lots of firewood, extra water, quilts, bread'n'butter - but still it won't be pleasant, and it won't be exciting. It ain't Ukraine, and it ain't Turkey, and it ain't Syria, but it is a notch on the survival pole that I can do without.