Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: the burden and joy of cold.
Ingredient List
🎵 : “Holocene” by Bon Iver, “Dear Chicago” by Ryan Adams, “Sundays and Holidays” by Red House Painters, “Cover Me Up,” by Jason Isbell, “Sigur 4 (Untitled)” by Sigur Ros, “Cape Canaveral” by Conor Oberst
Listen to the playlist on Spotify
📖 : “Madhouse at the End of the Earth” by Julian Sancton
🎥 : “Society of the Snow” (Netflix)
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude
One of my best friends (and first founding member of this Substack!) David, once attempted a bikepacking trip across Lake Baikal in Siberia, in the dead of winter. Apparently this is a thing people do. Patagonia? Morocco? Vietnam? Nope. The world’s deepest lake, covered in snow, frozen over… kind of. Turns out, it was a mild winter that year, which meant the terrifying sounds of thunderous pressure cracks kept them on a steady drip of adrenaline throughout the night, as the feared they would fall through the ice beneath their tent. What followed was the abandonment of a goal, but a rewarding and grueling journey nonetheless.
The exit of that journey led to a small village and the purchase of reindeer slippers at a small roadside market. Made by the hands of nomadic herders, these slippers aren’t made of hide, but of hair. It’s basically Locks of Love, but with Santa’s stable making a yearly donation.
In any case, I’ve had them for a few years, but was never sure when to wear them. They seemed so fragile and were indeed. I finally wore them this year, and I have to say, they’re pure luxury. An extra layer over socks have kept my feet warm and toasty over the past month and a half. It all came together even more perfectly after receiving a pair of Crocs that were a half-size too big. Put on the reindeer slippers, and all the gaps were filled, meaning I had a real Frankenstein of a footwear ensemble: merino wool socks, an outer layer of reindeer hair, all Russian dolled inside a pair of Realtree camo Crocs.
And for that, I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer
I just finished reading “Madhouse at the End of the Earth,” a maritime thriller and gothic horror novel based off the Arctic expedition of the Belgica in the late 19th century. The ship and its crew were attempting to be the first to claim the glory of reaching the South Pole; as you can imagine, things don’t go well. Heading into polar cap ice pack at the tail-end of fall isn’t exactly a recipe for success. A winter in darkness, frozen in place. Madness, mutiny, and chaos ensue.
While the story and the book itself weren’t as thrilling and heroic as Endurance (the story of Ernest Shackleton’s even more insane mission to the same place and quite possibly the greatest exploration book ever written), it was still a solid read.
While I won’t give away any of the key details, one of my biggest takeaways from the book was how much lack of light destroys men’s souls. While they were already stuck in an ice pack – and knew they would be for some time – the morale only plummeted when darkness consumed the crew. It wasn’t even gradual, it was a sudden break in spirit that sent the crew into a tailspin. Some never recovered.
Obviously, few of us could ever conceive a true Arctic winter, but we’ve probably all experienced seasonal depression in some way. I know it really used to affect me when I was younger. If I could think of any current parallel to the experiences of the crew on both the Belgica and the Endurance, it would be the combination of the first Covid winter as darkness and disease combined for a one-two punch that a lot of us couldn’t handle. It downshifted the collective spirit of society. Some found ways to keep morale high, while others descended into madness of some kind. It’s hard to admit, but I feel like was more of the latter.
It only took three years, but my own ice pack finally broke free. Which is good, because instead of wasting my time getting drunk and scrolling on my phone and losing my mind, I actually enjoy reading books again about other people losing theirs.
Course 3
The Main
For most of my life, I hated the cold. Like, truly hated months 11 through 3. Being inside, being outside, didn’t matter. It wasn’t even the deadness of everything, or the darkness (though they didn’t help) – it was just the cold. Always waiting wherever you tried to go. The vinyl seats in our station wagon, the way you could be so warm from sitting on the heating register in the kitchen before catching the bus. Then one step out the door before the cold pulls all the warmth out of my clothes, like grabbing the ankles of a kid hiding under a bed, saying “I found you, game’s over.”
The cold followed me to college in western PA where the winters were deader and grayer than anywhere I’ve ever been. The skies matched the depressing exhaust left over from when the steel industry went overseas some years before, sucking the color out of entire towns along the Ohio River. Cold walking to class, cold walking to Sheetz, cold just trying to get to know a damn girl and hold her hand since we weren’t allowed to do it in our dorms.
It somehow got even colder as life went along. Working the worst job ever in college for one summer, counting grocery store inventory. Sounds like a lukewarm gig, counting stuff in stores. Except they always stuck the rookies in the freezer section to start out, and ten minutes in I could barely key the number of mixed veggie bags on account of my shivering.
Then there were the band years, when winter touring was just moving from state to state in a chest freezer with wheels. We rode in a stripped-out cargo van with bunk beds but no insulation or air vents, trying to keep warm by cozying up to the tank of vegetable oil sitting next to the bottom bunk. Of course, nights when we couldn’t crash with someone in the middle of Illinois meant that it was time to make the icicles as we slept inside the steel frame of our Ford stagecoach.
Michigan always seemed to hit the hardest, the wind marching like the dead coming to take the living down the blank streets of Pontiac, me doing all I could to convince myself this cigarette was worth it. But it was all hard.
Off tour, I couldn’t even escape it in my own house. My best friend was trying his hardest to get his fledgling company off the ground, so he refused to turn the heat on until Christmas in our old Harrisburg house. I could barely binge-watch Lost through the fog of my breath in the living room. So I just sat bundled up in my bedroom drinking Evan Williams whiskey with a space heater on full blast, listening to Coast to Coast AM in the dead hours of the night and freaking myself out. He’s now a millionaire, and I was only paying him $150 a month in rent, so I guess it worked out for both of us.
Eventually I moved to Baltimore, and things started to warm up. For starters, it’s about seven degrees warmer than south central PA, even though it’s less than two hours south. Believe me, that’s a huge difference when it comes to 33 degrees vs. 40. But it all changed when I started running. (I promise this won’t be a Substack about running, but it will get mentioned from time to time.)
Training for a spring marathon means running through the winter, mostly because 1) my house is too small to take in a foster treadmill and, 2) I’m far too cheap to buy a gym membership. Outside it was. And boy, did it suck. I can vividly recall certain February mornings when it seemed plain stupid to be outside and getting slapped silly by frigid headwinds.
Slowly and quickly, I learned how to dress for the weather. You know, that thing that kids in Sweden intuitively know how to do from the grizzled age of one, taking naps outside in strollers as we Americans sit in hour-long drive thrus.
Turns out that intentional preparation applies to getting dressed. Eventually, I just realized I was cold my whole life because I had no idea how to dress for the cold. And that has made all the difference.
As a kid, we just had cotton, which seemed to be the only fabric in existence at that time aside from silk shirts for formal occasions and wool sweaters if you wanted to feel like you were suffocating inside a wild animal. That carried on through college and into my band years, where H&M became a staple, which posed a problem as fast fashion isn’t exactly going hard in the insulation department for a $50 winter coat.
However, once I started running in my mid-thirties, I learned how different materials and thicknesses and construction and fabrics really did matter. (If you’re wondering, merino wool is pretty much what I wear from head to toe all winter long, from top and bottom base layers to socks to gloves to winter hats to neckwarmers. It adjusts to your body temp so you’re never too hot or cold. In fact, I’m sitting on my couch in a 72-degree room typing this while wearing the same jacket I wear when it’s 25 degrees out.) Aside from dressing properly, I also was now spending hours a week outdoors in the winter, often in the dark, and the months I once hated had now became a haven. A reverse hibernation of sorts.
Today, winter is not only bearable, it’s downright lovely. Snowy winter hikes are at the top of my “things that should suck but are actually magical” list. Same with Saturday long runs, the cold all around for a couple hours but your body doing the perfect amount of work to keep it at bay. Trust me when I say there are few joys better than coming home from a two-hour run on a Saturday morning and having a hot cup of coffee with some pancakes and bacon. It can’t be replicated.
Then there’s the bike rides through quiet city streets at night, bombing a downhill in Patterson Park knowing you’re the only one there. And my favorite of all– morning walks to school with my kids who are lucky enough to wear REI baselayer tights, Smartwool neckwarmers, and real winter caps. I may have not known how to dress as a kid, but they will. Then again, they shed half of their layers by the time we get to school and– if given the choice– would wear shorts every day.
The cold continues to follow me. But instead of telling it go home, I now give it a treat and a little scratch behind the ears. Good boy, Jack. Maybe I do kind of love ya a little bit.
That said, don’t think I’m not counting down the days to spring, because that means that June is just around the corner. If you think what you just read is a love letter, just wait for the Shakespearean sonnet to summer.
Course 4
Dessert
I mentioned summer once, which means that’s where my mind is now. But cold matters even then, of course, as part of what makes summer so great is the juxtaposition of those islands of cold within a Sahara of sweat.
There’s a line in Conor Oberst’s song “Cape Canaveral” that was always just so vivid to me, because you can actually feel it:
Like the freon cold out the hotel door
Or the white rocket fade over Cape Canaveral
You've been a daughter to me, your buried shoebox grief
I felt your poltergeist love like Savannah heat
Both the beginning and ending lines of that section in the chorus are perfect bookends to each other, because you can just feel them. Especially if you’ve ever been to Savannah in the summer. On a muggy summer day, there’s nothing so relieving as walking into a wall of air conditioning that’s been on blast all day in a hotel room. I always felt like window-unit air conditioners pack a more initial powerful punch, though I’m not sure if that’s real or perceived (I experienced so few instances of air conditioning as a kid that whenever I ran into one, it felt like a baptism).
Granted, I never experienced staying in a hotel room until I was in college, but I know what it felt like to ride my bike to my grandma’s house in July and open the front door. I just had to make sure I closed it before I let all the cold air out.
End of Menu
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips are appreciated, but not expected.