When the mercury plummets to minus double digits, I think of my hometown, the place of my first 18 years—colder than any place I have ever lived. There is one particular occasion, waiting at a bus stop, that sums up my memories of harsh cold. It’s my freezing temperature benchmark.
On a grey winter day on a downtown street I wait alone for a bus, my vision narrowed to an expanse of frozen pavement. There is no shelter from the biting wind. My cheeks feel like cardboard, my ears are numb, the air is dryer than dry, my fingers clench inside mitts, feet stomp and my mind burrows deep.
mental challenge
in harsh winter winds
warm blood runs deep
~
©2018 Ontheland
My haibun is written in response to the dVerse Monday Hometown Haibun prompt.
Ontheland 
The cold is too well conveyed … even though indoors with the heat blasting I’m now shivering! Here in the UK the cold is very raw and damp, that dry cold you mention is quite something else!
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Damp cold can have its own torture … oddly I can keep the furnace lower in deep dry cold but feel the need to turn it up a notch in damper but less cold temperatures.
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So cold it can be… and there is nothing worse than waiting when it is so cold… the cardboard and the dryness I think I know.
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Always, Excellent! 😎🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀
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Thank you 🙂
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I too feel the cold, and the solitariness, and the grey. Brrr! (K)
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Being alone may have made that experience even harder.
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For sure…besides the distraction of company, bodies block the wind and can huddle close.
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Today it was -16 Celsius where I live…..needless to say I am ready for Spring.
Thanks for this haibun of chilly memories!
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I don’t know how you survive those temperatures! I know I have a particular medical problem with the cold but still! Your description of that feeling of the cold reaching right inside to the bones is so familiar and we haven’t even had daytime temperatures below freezing at all!
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I think people acclimatize…so that people living in the Yukon can handle even more severe cold. I’ll never forget the story of a guy who lived up North and wore summer clothes when visiting in cold winter farther south… mentioning the medical aspect, I have felt a cold within when your body can’t keep a steady temperature…I feel that when very tired and seen that in others with anemia.
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I have an auto-immune condition that means I have an internal thermostat that doesn’t work with hemolytic anemia as a consequence. Extremities go black when I get cold.
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That could get painful I imagine…I hope you can wear wool..the warmest I find.
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I have thermal stuff in synthetic material that I wear underneath the wool. It helps. Hands get it worst as I can’t wear gloves indoors all the time!
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Your layering approach sounds similar to mine…I often wear a hat indoors (keep the furnace low)…I wonder if there are open gloves (open finger tips) made of a light stretchy material…I have wool ones but they would be too clumsy for indoors. Anyway, I ramble 🙂
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I tried snipping the ends of a pair of old gloves, but typing is too difficult. I have a hood on my padded jacket to keep the furnace warm. At least we should be out of this bad patch in a few days. Can’t wait!
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Our temperatures are climbing oh so slowly although there is no steady hold above zero in sight…oh well…
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Hang on, Janice. Spring will come, even in the far north 🙂
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Thanks Jane…it is coming for sure… in its own way 🙂
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And in its own time 🙂
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