Bleak Midwinter

The Worst Month

We are currently experiencing the first of what are said to be three Arctic blasts, accompanied by a great deal of rain locally. Snow might at least be beautiful; cold rain and attending mud are not at all. It turns to ice in the freezing nights, but the days stay just a degree or two above freezing. The air at 34 degrees with high humidity and cold wind is far worse than the air at 28 with the water frozen out of the air. The skies are grey almost every day somehow. The few hours of sunlight is veiled, the lumens lowered by the lowering clouds.

Plus it's Dry January now, an event that I participate in every year because of the rational wisdom associated with it. It is an opportunity to prove my freedom to myself on Kant's terms, by which he meant doing what you least want to do because you ought to do it. Instead of just waiting out the month with a glass of ale, every year I add abstinence to the rest of the miseries of January. Thereby, perhaps, I improve my health; certainly I improve my discipline, and demonstrate my freedom from the control of base desires and appetites. All the same, it is entirely unpleasant.

There's a chance that I will get to ride sometime before February, but so far it's not looking good. I last rode on New Year's Eve, and it is starting to look like it may be St. Brigid's Day before there's another fit chance, if indeed one comes so soon as that. 

February isn't all that much better, but at least it brings back beer and daffodils. For now, all one can do is wait and endure, and try to fit in some maintenance projects. This month I'd like to go and repair my hand-built ford, which is still functional after Helene but worse for wear; other parts of the road to the old country cemetery that our governor decided to allow to rot, leaving it to the labor of individual citizen volunteers; and help a neighbor with a massive tree trunk that fell on his fence in the hurricane. We cleared the most of the tree the same day, as well as the road to his  home, but the bulk of the tree is thousands of pounds and will require a tractor and several of us with chainsaws. This neighborly effort has been being put off until after the holidays, which are now upon us. I went out and looked at it yesterday, shortly joined by one of those neighbors bundled up like a mummy, who averred that we might wait until the current cold snap passes... and the one after... and the one after that.