The past week has been cut out of February and pasted onto this part of November. Temperatures deep into the single digits, snow crusting over in the chill, and tingles inside my nose when I take hearty breaths. It is wonderful. It is invigorating. I want crackling campfires and slow pulls from a cup of hot, percolated coffee.

In the morning when I first go outside to start my car, I am caught for a moment in the almost paralyzing cold. It passes quickly. But I think in that moment about life in these colder climates before the development of and widespread use of furnaces. It wasn't that long ago that most homes in this rural region depended solely upon wood for its heat. And the woodstoves were not the efficient and technologically enhanced wood-burning stoves of today; I mean the pot-bellied cast-iron monstrosities of old that radiated heat the old-fashioned way. I then think about the dream of the solitary life in the farthest reaches of Wilderness. This means I think of Dick Proenneke and his forty years alone in the Wilderness of Alaska waking up every morning to temperatures well below twenty-degrees below zero Fahrenheit. What incredible fortitude. I imagine both my grandfathers in their youth, waking up to similar temperatures in similar wood-burning situations, getting ready in the deep chill to go and milk the cows at Four-in-the-morning. How impressive and wonderful was the body heat of a cow after that long, dark, early-morning walk to the barn?

And yet, I would prefer a cold experience similar to my grandfathers' and Dick Proenneke's to the brief moment of almost intolerable chill I feel every morning when I go to start my car in order to warm it up for the long ride into work in Rochester. But, oh well...right? We do what we have to do in this day and age of plenty. I need to pay for electricity and processed foods. I need to pay for gasoline and parts for a car so I can go to buy these things. I need to keep myself afloat in the slow river. I need I need I need. So much shit.

On another note: loneliness is a half-full rock sled. Being lonely is having the trudge behind that sled and heave rocks into it as you pick our way across the field in early Spring. The more rocks you pile onto that sled, the heavier it gets and the slower it moves across the field. Often, I find myself stopped in thought, in the market or after talking to people, pondering my loneliness. The other evening I was in Wegmans to buy some bread and fruit for dinner and everyone seemed to be coupled up. All I could do was walk slowly and take in the fact that I was silently making my way across the parking lot alone, to get into my car and drive, alone, back home where I would eat my bread and fruit...alone.