That's brisk, baby!

Walking into the cold this morning isn't a slap in the face. It like walking into a cellophane wall of cold. Your face pushes into it, and it wraps around your skin. Every pore is coated with cold, moving air. Once it embraces you, it begins to feed on your heat. You can feel each muscle tensing and straining as you walk to your car or bus or (if you're completely insane brave) bicycle. Dragon-sized clouds of steam pour from your mouth and nose, also quickly consumed by the wind. For a moment, you expect your breath to crystallize in the air and fall to the ground as one icy mass. That's if you have time to think about anything else. All your thoughts are about the cold.

It's glorious.

The cold is almost painful. It's intense and uncompromising. It forces you to feel, even as it numbs you from sensation. In short bursts it slaps aside the doldrums of your daily routine and screams in your face "You're alive!" In longer bursts it simplifies things. Nothing else matters or is more important that getting warm again. When you're ready to sleep, however, the cold is completely unacceptable. Unless, of course, it encourages company under warm blankets. Warmer than any comforter. A cool breath across your chest or cheek, in contrast to the cold wind keening outside.