Under the Coming of Winter

I know it’s only just falling, and I know, too, that I’ll likely be singing a different tune in a matter of weeks.

But so far, I have to say: winter is, in many ways, a comfort.

This Sunday has me sitting here in my pajamas watching the drear through my windows, listening to the rainfall on my skylight, taking slow pulls of nourishment off a full larder. Santa Fe is under warning for the first big storm of the season; starting tonight, we’ve been told we might see as much as six inches of snow. So I ran out and grabbed a scraper, filled my fridge with fresh food. It feels good to hunker down, somehow, a kind of atavistic, cave-dwelling hygge. It also gives me a great excuse to get a lot of work done… and yes, some non-work-related reading/coloring/podcast-listening/leisurely-bath-taking, too.

It is, however, shocking how fast it all happened. It feels like we only just celebrated the equinox, only just rang in the official start of fall. It’s true that the aspen have been yellowing for a while — but all of a sudden, the mountains that loom over town are flickeringly snow-capped, casting the look on and off from day to day like donning and doffing giant, white beanies. I went on a hike in pursuit of fall foliage and instead found myself making fresh tracks through a powdery, white blanket; I’d forgotten what the extra thousand or so feet of elevation meant for the preceding evening’s rain storm.

Although it’s gray right now, most days are still bright blue, casting the fading leaves in stark and gorgeous relief. The apples the squirrels and birds beat me to are fermenting, half-opened, on the tree in my backyard. It’s already been over a week since I lit my heater — and I do mean “lit,” with a lighter. It’s one of those old-timey gas numbers that makes an actual fire; I’d never seen one before and had to ask my landlord how to work it. He’s ailing, and so brought in his assistant, and all three of us crouched and knelt around the tiny metal box in the corner of my living room, wrenching open the gas line and fussing with the levels — a most ridiculous and Floridian introduction to the cold.

Work’s been keeping me busy, which is a good thing, but I still found time to go down to Albuquerque’s famous International Balloon Fiesta, a jaunt that required a 3:30 a.m. wakeup. I’d underestimated the early morning chill and arrived in yoga pants and a thin sweater; by the time I got back in my car and cranked the heat at 10 a.m., my fingers hadn’t worked for an hour.

I’ve also been regularly attending a lively board game night; I’ve decided I want to get better at drawing and have been doing Inktober. I’ve made enough new friends that it’s hard to nourish all the budding relationships while still finding enough time to work and be an introvert.

I am, in other words, actually making a life here — one which I’m excited will be punctuated by the changing of seasons.