Cold and Clear

Minus sixteen this morning when I started a walk on New Year’s Day. A big bronze moon was about to set at 8:30 dawn. Last night, the same big moon had a circle around it, and the night was clear, which accounts for this morning’s low temperature.

I walked a mile or two toward the airport and stopped for coffee. “You look cold,” said the waitress at the Chocolate Moose Restaurant. But I didn’t feel cold. “Here’s a napkin to wipe your nose,” she said. I stood in the vestibule and peeled off layers—first the thick gloves, then the under-gloves, pulled back the hood of my coat, the sweat band which serves as a nose warmer, the elastic face mask from Sharon Rizk (Where is she anyway?), knitted bogan off my head, shake out my matted hair, now unzip the coat. I walk to a table, carrying all this, take off the backpack, take off the coat, remove the under-vest. Finally, I sit.



I took a shortcut through a field and left knee-deep holes in the powder. It’s been a week since any significant snow fell, but thawing temperatures have not happened, and the powder stays just as it falls, unless wind comes to disturb it. But in this field surrounded by forest it looks as if the snow fell last night.

Chocolate Mousse means the same here as it does in California, except that almost everyone but me has seen a moose around here, and they really are the color of chocolate. It’s best not to see their lanky legs and big antlers coming at you on the highway. Not that they are aggressive, they just don’t know what to make of a car.







Standing under icicles like these can lead to a very bad poetic experience, as shown by a man who died from a falling icicle in Devon, England. They put this on his stone:

Bless my eyes
Here he lies
In a sad pickle
Killed by an icicle