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No Fear

Posted By MoPat On February 11, 2007 @ 6:17 pm In Winter | 3 Comments

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.

3 Comments To "No Fear"

#1 Comment By LIZAinBUFF On February 11, 2007 @ February 11, 2007

My gosh… your writing style is so beautiful, I could feel the cold, then the warmth, then the sting as if I were there!!

Wait a minute, I AM!!
I’ve not taken as long a walk as that in the cold in years.

I often leave my townhouse after dark and experience the sceeerruuuuunch of the rigid snow under feet and inhale the placid below zero degrees air. It’s incredibly peaceful and yes, there’s no one but me and the angels on the trek.

#2 Comment By James Mulvey On April 2, 2007 @ April 2, 2007

I remember two such nights . . .one was the day before Christmas Eve in Rochester . . . we lived in the city then, and my Uncle and I were walking off too much Chestnut Dressing from the meal we had just feasted on . . . boots squeak-crunching in the ice-cold powdersnow . . . as we turned one corner, we walked past the Church we attended. He suggested we stop in for a quick prayer (never hurts) so we pushed the massive wooden doors opened and my immediately fogged glasses made me concentrate on ym sense of smell . . .and the sooty-sweet smell of years of votive candles, the deep overtones of aged wooden pews filled my nostrils as we moved into the nave, bending our knees in respect as we slid into one of the pews mid-way down the Nave. The second was Christmas Eve in Lake Placid, walking down main street to the church. Looking up, the sky looked like black velvet, with briliant diamonds of light showing through for every star and in the silent, still air you could hardly feel the 28 below zero temperature. Noses tucked behind storm flaps of our parkas, we breathed air rising warm from our jackets and the wooly-mothcrystal scent of my sweater, knitted by loving hands as a gift the previous Christmas made me feel warm and surrounded by family.

#3 Comment By Camille On July 1, 2007 @ July 1, 2007

Home never leaves you.

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