Cold fingers and a warm heart
”Is the stop sign dancing today?”
Whitehorse is often receiving these brutal winds on cloudy, stormy days. There’s a stop sign outside of my bedroom window that I often joke is dancing.
Snow blows off roofs and veins down the streets. It’s beautiful. It’s one of my happiest, simple pleasures. I could make a coffee and watch it all day. It’s the sheer beauty and power of winter from inside, from my happiest place.
Frostbite of years
My cheeks, my nose, especially my fingers. They hurt so much in the cold. Even this spring in the south, it was more painful than I could describe. The wind against my ears was almost intolerable.
For years, every cold night of too little time inside and too much time trying to take photos led to this sort of pain. For years before even that, I would spend nights outside in Yellowknife’s -40 without even a balaclava. I made the tall collar of my parka, now 12 years old, enough protection for my face somehow.
That pain was one of the things that helped me find peace in leaving Yellowknife. It was small, comparatively tiny to everything else, but it had a place on the "leaving” side of the paper all the same.
Mountain air
In this warmer weather of very recently, there have been clear nights too. Afternoons of the most amazing golden hours and sunsets have been plentiful. Low cloud catching sunset light would blow by so quickly overhead. The beauty is almost always too much.
On one of these days, I made a spontaneous and humble drive to the countryside. I knew I needed time there, I could feel that. The temperature was -7° in town, but would reach -19° when I parked, which I wasn’t dressed for. I could immediately feel the cold on my legs, face, and hands.
I was oblivious to the moonrise, but it was nearly full and up just over the mountains down the river. I explored the river ice, I watched the clouds, the colours of the sky, and listened to the water and the birds. Time almost stood still. These winter blues and passings clouds were among the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Maybe that is some nostalgia from Norway too, in these mountains. Or maybe it’s just the slow, conscious loving on nature.
While changing lenses or taking short videos on my phone, I could feel the cold wind grip my fingers and my hand. It hurt. But I kept noticing it wasn’t quite like before. It still hurt, but it’s better. It’s like my skin has started to heal. For a couple of years, it’s been painful and noticeable at every moment. But now over months, over my falling in love with the Yukon and my life here, my cheeks haven’t hurt as much, my fingers feel better outside in the cold, and the wind on my ears doesn’t make me want to crawl into the fetal position. I can enjoy the winter wind more again.
So just maybe a healing of the heart helps to heal the body too.
