Out here in the Pennsylvania mountains winter comes down like old age.
Everything creaks: the walls at night; the stairs as I carry another cup of coffee to the office; the snow under my feet when I venture out to check the gauge on the propane tank; my bones all the time. I'm not built for the cold. I came into the world weighing less than a bag of sugar after someone's baked a batch of Christmas cookies and I've never caught up. Chill doesn't have far to travel to reach my bones.
In February silence encases the world like the ice on the branches of the pines beyond the window. With the space heater off you can hear at long intervals trucks shifting gears on the highway a mile away. Nothing else. The birds hopping around the snow-covered porch roof looking for seeds in the gutters never sing. How do they survive, I wonder? Usually the heater needs to be on. Its breathy hum drowns out the silence, muffles the noises of the furnace, water heater, and well pump turning on and off. Existential sounds this time of year. Necessary as heartbeats. I find myself listening for them, anxiously. Not unlike those poor souls who can't help hearing the click-click of their artificial heart valves.
Waiting for the well pump to grind through its cycle and click off successfully is the worst. The water pipes running through the unheated crawlspace beneath the house are wrapped in insulation and heat tapes but have still frozen deep in the hole where they emerge from the ground. You only find out when the pump can't force water through the blocked pipe and the faucets go dry. I'm starting to feel too old to wedge myself through the cat-sized door in the foundation and creep across frozen earth, avoiding pipes and wiring, inhaling cobwebs, in sub-zero darkness and then praying the heat gun won't fail to do the job this time. Come to think of it, I've felt too old to do that roughly from the time I was able to walk.
The cold also makes it impossible to go to the store for weeks on end. This area doesn't get Buffaloed with blizzards but our house is separated from the state road by a stretch of hill that's rendered impassable by an inch of frozen snow or a glaze of ice. So even while we listen out for the household machinery we're keeping track of the groceries we stock up during the fall, hoping they last until a rare winter thaw or spring. Unless this is the year spring doesn't arrive. By mid February warm weather begins to seem like a myth. Luckily we're both connoisseurs of tinned cuisine. If Spam was good enough for the troops during World War II why should a couple of scribblers complain? Besides, Spam is pretty much fat and salt. What's not to like?
Looking on the bright side, we've never failed to get through a winter yet. And the season does have its icy charms. Does life offer a more glorious gift than a snow day for a school kid? Is there any place more magical than snowy woods on a moonlit night? And the goldfish in the ice of the cow pond where my friends and I skated as kids were magical. I remember them, flashes of orange and yellow like gems embedded in the blue under my skates. If you were willing to kneel and let the ice bite through your trousers you could see their bulging eyes goggling up at you. Freed from their bowls during the summer, now they were imprisoned again. We convinced ourselves that as soon as spring arrived the goldfish shook the frost off their scales and swam happily all summer. I've come to doubt that but it's a nice thought.
There's little doubt, though, that Casa Maywrite will eventually thaw out and its inhabitants will resume swimming, however creakily.
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