I Like Cold!

For anyone who is familiar with Wisconsin, they'll recall we had record snowfall last winter (104 inches) – and this year looks to be much the same, with the addition of extreme cold.  Yet, after a week's visit in balmy south Texas, I was anxious to get home because I missed the colder climate.  It seemed unnatural for the temperature to be in the 70s in January – that just wasn't right!  My first day home I reveled in donning my long underwear, boots, scarf and gloves and shoveling snow while breathing in the crisp, fresh air.  Even when the wind chill brought the temperatures well below zero, my girlfriend and I were out shopping, hoping to catch a deal on post-Christmas clothing.  Crazy, you say?  To me it seems no crazier than the Arizonian who can't wait to get back home and swelter in that 100 degree heat; but, to each their own.  There is a sereneness to the stillness of snow covered fields that I just couldn't find with swaying palm trees.  So, in the spirit of loyalty to my home state, I offer this poem.

Minus Ten Degrees of Bliss

We Wisconsinites like our winters strong.

None of this wimpy slush or insipid sleet,

but give us biting, bone-cracking, sub-zero cold

and a clear sky with the sun sharp;

give us mounds, piles, extravagance of snow

to conquer, plow, swoosh and mush through --

not this "light dusting," a fingerflick of white,

hardly worth the trouble.

Make our toes and fingers ache with chill

that we might test out

the latest thermo-wool-fleece everything

and debate the merits of Sorels versus Bean's;

Let us decorate the pristine fields

with blaze orange and degrees of camouflage

as we leave our solid boot prints of the hunt,

or hear the gleeful whine of engines

of blowers and throwers and mobiles.

We say, bring on the snow,

save us from mundane asphalt

and set us loose in the frigid woods,

the iced lakes and the random treks

of the winter wilds.