I am no longer tolerant of the cold of my Midwestern heritage. Spoiled by the relative warmth of the American Southwest, the cold is an invader, a threat.
But when I was a child, I relished going out into the snow. I would stand as far up the snow-covered driveway as possible, bright red plastic boat sled pulled to my chest, and run towards the back yard. I’d launch myself into the air, land with a crunch in the snow, and slide at great speed down the slope of the yard towards the woods, seeing how long I could stay on before having to throw myself out of the way of the oncoming briars.
Then I would lie there and let the thick, perfect silence fill my ears like frozen cotton. The sky was an empty grey, unfinished. Only my puffs of breath hinted that the world existed at all.
I was in Indiana over the Christmas holiday, I think the quality of cold there is different from the cold here. here, it’s an invader and it knows it, so it tries real hard to get in wherever it can…it’s a pushy kind of cold. In Indiana, it was a very still cold that stayed where it was put and didn’t try to get into my personal space 🙂
I lived in both Arizona and North Carolina for a while, God knows how I ended up back in Ohio. I feel the cold more now than ever before, but I have virtually no memory of it being cold when I was younger. It seemed I could stay outside for an entire day and suffer no ill effect.
I vividly remeber hiking through the woods to the hills behind Brookledge GC, clinging to the plastic sleds while flying down the main hill there, and hiking back up the cross country ski trails to the fire that seemed to perpetually burn at the top of the hill.
Despite feeling the cold more, I still enjoy hiking in the snow. The past few weeks have afforded me an excellent opportunity. Unfortunatley those old hills are no more.