I have not been cold...

...for the past three winters (2004-05 through 2006-07). There is generally an early cold snap in October in the southwest corner of North Carolina where we keep the camper. I have fortuitously been in the mountains in mid-October during each of the past three years when that cold snap hit. It is not an Arctic blast, but is usually 30 degrees or colder, which is very cold in the open wind on top of a mountain.

The furnace in my camper has suffered an odd inconsistency. A mouse chewed through a wire on on the camper's heater in 2004-05. I waited nearly a year to have it repaired. The camper heater worked and I had a battery in 2005-06. The marine batteries I use were dead for October cold snap in 2006-07. I was essentially without heat for two of the three years.

The sky is clear and the stars are infinite when winter pre-announces his arrival in early autumn. The black-violet mountain sky carpeted with diamonds is beautiful beyond what the jewelers in the city could imagine. I stood on the deck outside the camper to watch the sky sparkle and let the cold whip me for as long as I could stand it, for each of those three years. I was not cold for the rest of the year during those years when I did so. I have traded my heavy coat for a lighter jacket.

I cannot be certain that facing winter in this way is the solitary cause for me not being cold all year long; I have a much thicker layer of fat than when I was younger. I believe this Old Man Winter Therapy is the primary reason.

I wrote this poem by candle light in my camper - trying to warm up by lighting candles and running the gas stove and oven.

meeting winter

How can you know Winter
if you have not stood on
your porch and met him?
Face him briskly by,
his scratches raking your face,
down your back,
rigid wicked shivers wrack your spine.
The night is clear.
The sky is wide open.
The greatness is greater,
the beauty more beautiful,
than the pain of the cold.
Winter tries with his screeching calls
to wrench this pleasure from me.
All rocks slide down the hill,
eventually.
For now, I greet the old man,
coming over the hill with his creaking bones
and his cane,
flailing at the leaves with his
unpredictable breath
this way, or not, in the wind.
He nods at me a prescient nod,
long knotted hair and silvery beard waving,
and continues on his crooked way
driving his icy winds
across this mountain top.
Later I retire
to contemplate
this poem.

I am in California this year, so I missed the Old Man when he went bolting over the North Carolina mountains.

        I hope
              I
                        have
                somewhere warm
        to go
                after
        I see him
again.