Becoming Accustomed

I stepped outside this morning and took a draught of undiluted twenty-degree air. Sun was rising as I walked two miles for coffee and groceries at Super Value Foods, then returned before noon. It could have been a day at home, only a little colder.

Some say to me, “I would think you feel lonesome up there and want to be near folks—cold days especially.” Or if they might say, “Over Christmas?” I wonder what sort of space separates a person from friends and makes her solitary? I can’t be impartial, but it seems that many people are more isolated in the metropolis of Pasadena than I am where I know only a few—new people from the past eleven days. At home I take a morning walk and read a book with coffee, as I did today. Yesterday, I rode a bicycle as I do at home. My internet is the same here and so is my cell phone. And since the weather is near record for mildness, I could have done it all at home. I still hope to use my ice skates, skis and snowshoes, but if not, then I will experience a new and very different place and become a little familiar with it. So is my evaluation at what seems like the end of newness. It will not be time subtracted from my life.

At first I was fascinated with the forest, so different from our western pine and fir. My first few days in the woods were amazement, and never ceased to be novel. I brought twigs and leaves to the astonishment of people who looked at me and at the leaves, wondering how anyone could be excited about a new kind of tree. Nothing memorial was accomplished in that effort except that I learned, saw, noted, took pictures and placed marks on my map. I look back today on my notes and pictures and feel happy that it did them, for now, in the stage of early familiarity, I might not notice leaves. I see them today and remember how special they were. Above familiar leaves I see the horizontal brown lines on a white tree and know that it is birch, probably paper birch, but maybe river birch. It would have been seen by an Ojabway Indian as good for the outer covering of a canoe, or lapped roofing for a house. Today, a forester would evaluate it for making paper. All these things were unknown to me on November 18 when I first saw a birch tree and had no idea what it was.

I come to a new forest and take some little piece of it in my hands to play with. The days grow from morning to evening as if to light the work, with exploration and wonder at new things. I’ve been fortunate to see work and play almost merge throughout my life. Seldom is any task drudgery. But in a new surrounding, I hop about like a newborn calf, immature and kicking, just to feel the experience.

I go to bed later here so not to wake before daylight, which begins about seven. It is morning and then it is evening, and soon it is eleven pm. I wish for snow and ice, but I will not allow myself to be bored. I am reading books and even doing some computer work which I could do at home. And to enliven life a bit I go out in the cold without a jacket.

I met my landlord as I returned one evening, sitting outside in his tee shirt in twenty degrees. I was wearing gloves, heavy coat, hood and heavy socks inside my insulated boots and felt about right. “I won’t stay long he said; it’s good for the blood.” So I took him up on it and started defying the cold. It's funny how it can be fifty-five in Pasadena and feel cold. I have my jacket on in the house sometimes at home when it’s sixty. But last night I walked to the liquor store without a jacket or gloves, a ten minute walk in twenty degrees with some wind. It did not seem too bad for that short time, but I could not stand it for long. But why do it? To save the time of getting all bundled up? Partly. It’s a way of thinking. Some people jump in the lake before it freezes. But we always have a warm place to go inside; at least I think we all do. In California, we don't even turn the heat on, believing it never stays cold very long; we shiver in our unbelief in lasting cold. It’s the defiance of cold, the disbelief that it really is cold, that drives us go outside under clothed in Frostbite Falls. But all that might, of necessity, when it is not twenty, but minus twenty.