Prairie Landing
Monday, February 12, 2007
Yeah, it's cold
Did you ever have to read Jack London's "To Build a Fire"? This guy is walking in the Klondike freezing to death and at the end of the story he actually freezes to death. I think about this story often.
If you wear enough layers you can stay pretty warm even when the temp hovers around zero, as it has the past 2 weeks, but your fingers still get numb. Sometimes when I'm standing outside the front gate, fumbling with my keys and my clumsy frozen fingers, I think, one of these days I'm going to die out here. I picture myself peacefully drifting off amid the footprints and salt -- they use mountains of salt around here -- with the lights of my home and the Chipotle just out of reach as my sight gently, inexorably, dims to black. Just like the guy did after a big pile of snow snuffed out his fire and he ignored his dog's warnings to turn back.
Here's a picture of the view outside my window at work now.
That big white expance on the left is Lake Michigan, which is covered with snow (over ice, of course).
If you wear enough layers you can stay pretty warm even when the temp hovers around zero, as it has the past 2 weeks, but your fingers still get numb. Sometimes when I'm standing outside the front gate, fumbling with my keys and my clumsy frozen fingers, I think, one of these days I'm going to die out here. I picture myself peacefully drifting off amid the footprints and salt -- they use mountains of salt around here -- with the lights of my home and the Chipotle just out of reach as my sight gently, inexorably, dims to black. Just like the guy did after a big pile of snow snuffed out his fire and he ignored his dog's warnings to turn back.
Here's a picture of the view outside my window at work now.
That big white expance on the left is Lake Michigan, which is covered with snow (over ice, of course).
Labels: bitter cold, cold
