A Cold One (Pt. I)

Arise and confront the bleak morning. There is warmth and light along the way.

Wake up in the darkness. It will be an hour or so before light. The covers are warm and you can sense that outside beyond the curtains it is not. The cold is pressing against the window, the frost making tessellations across the pane. Rouse yourself. The morning slips by when you have somewhere to be. Fill the kettle and turn on the burner, hear the click-click-click of the sparker and the soft woosh as the gas ignites. Don’t turn on the kitchen light just yet. Let the blue halo illuminate the dim kitchen, glow off your cheekbones and give an ethereal haze to the scene. In the window sill sits a glass dish with your wife's earrings. The gold clip-ons that she wears when she remembers where they are.

Upstairs you pull on your long johns. The grey ones with the surgical slit on the right calf from a minor ski accident. The base layer is still okay and so are you. Put the fleece over top, the green Cabela’s set that you’ve worn since you could hold a deer rifle by yourself. Save the down filled pants and jacket until you’re ready to walk out the door. The water is ready, you can hear the shrill whistle from the pot. Hang on, hang on, you say. Pull on your wool socks, tuck them over the fleece and put your slippers back on. Make the big pot today, fill the bottom quarter inch of the carafe with coffee and pour the hot water overtop, just enough to create a paste, to let it bloom, or whatever. Pour the rest of the hot water in and let the familiar aroma fill the small space, and banish the cold air seeping in by the sill.

Start the car. There’s no remote start so you have to do it the old fashioned way. Slip your feet into the tall boots, put on your Carhartt and trudge to the car. Put in the clutch and turn it over. Give the wipers a flick to clear the windshield and then pop it into neutral, yank up the parking brake. Shuffle back inside. Turn on the other burner, the main one. Click-click-whoosh. Split the English muffin over the sink so you don’t spill crumbs and pop it into the toaster. Crack an egg into the pan and listen to it snap, sizzle, and harden around the edges as you sip coffee from your thermos. Almost time to go.

Flip the egg onto the English muffin and wrap it in a paper towel— your usual to-go order. Put the lid on your thermos and toss the last of the odds and ends in the tote bag by the door. Don’t forget the bait in the fridge. Don’t forget the graph (fish finder for the uninitiated). Goodbye, goodbye you say softly to the sleeping house. Turn down the thermostat, you will be gone for a while. Goodbye, I love you, you whisper to your wife, even though she is away on a work trip and no one else is there. Turn out the lights and shut the door.

The car is idling outside, surveying the parking lot with half-lidded eyes. Reverse and change the radio station without looking, hunting for the sportsman talk show that plays every Saturday morning. The same one that you listen to at deer camp in the fall. Something about rituals. Oddly enough they are talking about deer season, an eternal topic of discussion. In the back is a sled laden with buckets and tip-ups, ice augers and tackle boxes–the many necessary implements for a day upon a frozen lake. Each bump in the road, each rut and pothole causes the ensemble to rattle and clank, a chorus of stowed chaos.

You flick on the high beams but revert back to your mains because the snow is falling thick and it’s harder to see. There are many miles to go, Mr. Frost - a principle reason for the early wake up. The roads are mostly vacant save for a few pre-dawn travelers such as yourself. Despite the empty corridors, the traffic lights still cycle through their regular cadence, still upholding order. And then there are no more traffic lights.

You are on the county roads now and the path is untraveled. The asphalt laid bare by the plow truck has already been coated in a fresh layer. No one else has yet traversed this road since the plow–there are no tracks. You are a pioneer. Dashing across open fields, the winds swirl atop the pushed banks which lean over the shoulder like a cascading wave halted before the fatal collapse. You know the roads, all is well.

It is snowing heavier now and you turn down the chatter of sportsman’s radio to focus. It is a squall blown off the big lake, pushing ever inward. It will soon pass. You navigate the S-curve, slowly slowly, tapping the brakes to get a sense of the road, a feel for the traction or lack thereof. Almost there now and what’s more the snow has stopped as well. You are on the long stretch now, down past the town that has yet to wake, save for the coffee shop which radiates muted light within steamed windows. It is comforting to know that others are awake and about their business even if they are strangers.

The town is yet adorned in strings of Christmas lights stretched along building eaves and snaking up lampposts. It has a quiet charm, like Christmas day is yet to arrive instead of being so far away. Now you are on the long stretch out of town, an empty highway that connects one town to another. A space in between. You slip past one other town, one you know so well in its summer attire. This town, too, is still adorned with its festive wear, its streets and crossroads empty. Snow is piled on shop roofs and in front of storefronts, insulating it until spring.

You make the right turn, signaling for no one, and then chug up the small hill. At its base two deer emerge from a copse of cedar trees and cross in front of you, plodding through the deep snow in a half-startled gait across a lawn and head to the next bottomland thicket. You continue on your way, summit the hill and coast down the maple lined stretch that opens into the gravel lot at the lake’s edge. In winter it looks like just another dormant field–a sprawling white expanse, ephemeral acreage that holds its own type of modest harvest. S is already there. His truck is idling, the headlights also observing with half lidded eyes toward the cedars and field beyond. You check your dash clock. 7:22 it says but it is seven minutes fast.

You have made the rendezvous. You put the car in park and heave out of the seat, a bit of an effort with the added under layers and thick bibs. You made it, he hails and you shake his hand, observing his sled already dismounted from the bed of his truck. You glance beyond to the lake, to the dawn that has yet to crest over the eastern shore and you tuck your hands back into your bib pockets. You made it.