Cold

Sometime time around 2 am I looked out the bedroom window to see Orion’s Belt brighter than I think I’ve ever seen it. There have been high clouds or a streaky haze of condensation obscuring the sky somewhat, though it has still been so much sunnier than it would be at home in Seattle right now. It had all burned off and it was so clear that I went to look out the other side of the house. I saw a reddish dot amongst the white stars and for a brief moment, I wondered if it was Mars. Then it started to move and I thought, airplane or satellite, and I went back to bed.

The sun hits me right in the face while I drink my coffee in the morning. It must first clear a ridge of mountains and then filter through the oak trees, but sometime around 7:30 it punches right through a gap in the scrub. I have to pull the drapes half closed to block it until the sun is higher up in the sky. I could move, but that would mean not watching the sun gild the trees.

About this time I let Harley out. The last two days he has barked at nothing I can see or hear. I have chosen to believe it is the cold, both mornings it was below 20F and I think he is as surprised by it as I am.

When I decided I would come to Moab for the winter, I was looking for sun. While I packed for cold, I did not calculate for this degree of cold, and I did not expect the town to be quite so shut down. Many of the shops have signs saying they are closed until spring, the restaurants are doing their annual deep clean and reset, it is shockingly quiet. My rental is on an unpaved spur of road and there is no through traffic. The silence would be deafening were it not for the blower on the heat or the clatter of the refrigerator. When all the gadgets are off the silence is such that it feels like I can hear the static electricity moving around inside my brain.

It is too cold for the things I had imagined myself doing while I was here. I am in no hurry to drive a potentially icy mountain road on my own in search of those magical vistas, I do not want to slip and fall on a hiking trail. There is not enough snow for traction. I am packed for cold weather, but I would like it to be above freezing for an hour or two before I get behind the wheel of the car. There is so little traffic; I can not count on those before me to have melted the ice on the asphalt.

This could sound like a complaint, but it’s not. The last two mornings, the mornings that are so cold that Harley the Dog has immediately barked his objections at the temperatures, I have made headway on my book project. It is too cold to do anything else. I am a good cook, and cooking is a warm activity, so I have made myself healthy food. I have a little bit of paying work, a pile of books, my watercolors, a deck of tarot cards gifted to me by, oddly, my most logical friend, and an internet connection. The supermarket is open, it is probably the liveliest place in town. The hardware store is open too; it’s where I went to buy a moka pot, though I could also have got a gun safe were I so inclined. There is nothing and everything to do.

I am wired for mornings. This does not benefit me here, the best time of day is after 1 pm, by which time I am very much done and would like a nap, thank you. I am trying to adjust, as is Harley, to a new schedule that has us outside when it’s merely freezing, not below freezing. I am trying to get in two walks a day, a short one in the morning, and a longer one once it’s not face-biting cold out. It takes a fair bit of effort to bundle up and go out, but the reward is a sparkling light, a bright sun reflecting on anything, everything, sturdy enough to be out in this sharp cold.