Windy Cold

After forty days in the Icebox, I have come to believe certain things. These are not the same as things I observe, measure and record, nor things I deduce. No, there are some things of which I say, “I hold these truths to be self evident.” Upon such belief, I proceed to build a life as America built a nation. If you prove me wrong with science, I will smile and acquiesce, but my beliefs will not change. They will comfort me and guide my actions far longer than mere reason or science.

One such belief is that “cold” is not just the absence of heat as science says, but is instead a real quality, more real perhaps than heat. Aristotle called it “primum frigidum” and has been “proven” wrong. But I know he is right because I know cold.

Now, you will respond by saying, “Define cold.”

As soon as I try to define it, something goes haywire, so I say that it can’t be defined. And I hear you say, “But definitions are the foundation of reason. If you can’t define “cold” there is no way you can say it exists.” Please forgive as I have this dialog with you, writing your thoughts with my fingers, I do enjoy it; but defining “cold” is like defining art; it leads to wonderful schools of experts who determine where each artist succeeds or fails. Some things are best left undefined.

I can single out aspects of “cold” such as pinpricks, numbness, shivers, icicles hanging from glasses, creaking sound of a frozen coat, squeak of boots. But these do not substantiate its existence; and it does exist. With definition blocked, I view “cold” as a romantic, undisturbed by thought structures. Without cold, poetry about it would disappear, since it has no practical value and seldom makes sense.

When I am Nordic skiing in a wind chill of say, minus twenty, I see the world as a trinity of cold, mind and matter. The past exists only in memory, the future only in plan. Present and cold, the only reality. Cold is the parent of mind and matter, the source of all subjects and objects. And now you are about to say, “This is preintellectual and unimportant in light of science and reason.” Or maybe I have convinced you; it doesn’t matter. Today, I met cold again, my ski tracks left in the past.








Oak leaves die in the fall as do birch, alder and lilac leaves. But unlike its peers, the tree holds onto a few of its summer memories. They flutter brown and brittle far into the winter. Only in a strong wind do they detach and land on snow as the only memories of summer.










Dry and not much growing
desert wind from the arctic













Some folks are not much into snow removal.