crashing down cold

The ground is crunchy frozen again, this happening almost immediately after flooding from long periods of rain, and our large swampy pools of excess water have turned into solid ice. The moon rose in the east tonight, fat and full, and the weather folk on tv say it will be even colder tonight.

This is one of those unsettling times for me, in the midwest, when the temperatures fall below my comfort zone, into a cold that is unforgiving in its thoroughness. Will the pipes break? Will the furnace hold out? No. Yes. In a house as old as this one, if these winters were to overwhelm it, it would have broken down long ago.

The respite of the past couple of weeks, akin more to April than late December-January, brought the warmth of fresh grass, soft earth and little signs of green life among the perennials as I divided them. That is forgotten in this harsh cold, which what is supposed to happen this time of year. Still, it unsettles.

Even with the sun shining, as it did for most of the day, there is a lonely stillness in air this cold, and the poor folk who are outside for any period of time are not jovially chatting or walking slowly through the landscape, but hurrying, while bundled up, looking for the recovery found in a heated room.