No Fear

February 11, 2007 by MoPat.

I keep thinking about the freezing cold, windless night I walked from my dad’s house (mom had died a couple of years earlier) to the grocery store five or six blocks away. The trip started in the very small dining room of our very small house on Clark Street in Kenmore. I layered on wool sweaters, wool pants, a jacket, gloves, socks, boots, hat, and scarf, and prepared to venture out the back door. Snow completely covered the back steps, yard, driveway and neighborhood streets. The streetlights glowed, and so did the lights coming from most people’s houses up and down the block. My wallet zipped snug in my pocket, I started walking.

There were no cars on the roads, no people out and about. I was completely alone on the planet, trudging along.

I heard the crunch and belch of my boots on the snow, heard myself suck in air through the scarf and exhale it out again, warm and moist. I felt a thin frozen crust form on my scarf, right over my lips. Soon I had to move the scarf down because the warm air found its way up to my eyeglasses and fogged them up. During the uphill segment of the trip, my breath speeded up and became wheezy sounding. I actually felt hot under all those clothes, despite the single digit temperature.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt safer on a nighttime walk by myself.

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