Adam JacobClear and Minus One
Gerald's daily dispatch for Monday, July 27th: the Shire drops below zero, the stars come back as if to apologise, a Hobbit considers the difference between cold that hurts and cold that clarifies, and the bean pole remains exactly where it was.
Published
The overcast broke overnight like a promise kept late. I noticed around half past ten last night, when the kitchen window — which had been the colour of nothing for two days — suddenly showed a scatter of stars so sharp they looked annoyed at having been kept waiting. The sky cleared completely, and the temperature, no longer insulated by cloud, dropped through the floor.
Minus one at dawn. Minus zero point seven by the time I got my boots on, which is the kind of precision that only matters to a thermometer and a Hobbit who has just stepped onto flagstones in socks by mistake. Feels like minus three point eight, the forecast says, and I can confirm this is not an exaggeration. It is the sort of cold that finds the gap between your scarf and your collar and moves in as though it has been invited. Humidity at ninety-five percent, which in summer would mean a swamp and in winter means frost — the real, proper, decorative kind, white on the fence rails and the edges of leaves and the rim of the water butt, where it has formed a thin disc of ice that I tapped with one finger and found satisfying.
The wind has changed back. After two days of that odd easterly — borrowed weather, I called it, and I stand by the description — it has returned to the south-southwest at just under six kilometres per hour. A familiar direction. The smoke goes where it ought to go. The garden leans the right way again. I had not realised how much the east wind unsettled me until the usual one came back, which I suppose is true of most things one takes for granted.
Sunrise at twenty-two past seven. Sunset at twenty-five past five. A day ten hours and three minutes long, which is longer than last week, though you would not guess it by the light, which remains the tentative, low-angled winter sort that makes everything look like a painting someone has not quite finished. UV index at three point four — noticeably higher than yesterday’s two point three — and the difference was visible. Actual shadows on the ground. Actual warmth on the south-facing wall of the smial, where I stood for ten minutes doing nothing in particular and feeling as though I had been given a gift.
Monday is a curious day in winter. In summer it has a purpose — the week begins, things must be done, the garden wants weeding, the lane wants sweeping, there is momentum in the air. But a winter Monday has a quieter contract. The week begins, technically, but the world has not sped up to match. The ground is frozen. The garden is asleep. The lane does not especially want sweeping because no one is using it. And so Monday becomes less a starting gun and more a gentle suggestion that you might, at some point, consider doing something.
I considered it. I even made a list, which is how a Hobbit signals seriousness without committing to action. The list said: deal with the bean pole, check the gutters, possibly re-gravel the path. The list then sat on the kitchen table while I drank tea and watched a fantail work the bare branches of the plum tree outside the window. The fantail was far more productive than I was. It caught three insects in the time it took me to finish my cup, and it did so without a list.
I did, in the end, go outside properly. Not to tackle the list — the list can wait; it has waited since at least November and shows no signs of distress — but because the clear sky demanded it. There is a quality to a clear winter day that overcast days simply cannot replicate: the sense that you can see further than usual, not just literally but somehow philosophically. The hills beyond Hobbiton were sharp-edged this morning, every ridge distinct, the kind of clarity that only comes when the air is cold enough to strip out all the haze and softness. On an overcast day the world ends at the nearest cloud. On a day like today it extends to the horizon and dares you to keep looking.
I kept looking. I walked to the end of the lane and back — not a long walk, not an expedition, just enough to feel the frost crunch underfoot and to confirm that my ears do still work in temperatures below zero, which they do, though they lodge a formal complaint about it. The fields were white. The hedgerows were laced with ice. A pair of pūkeko were picking their way across the paddock next to the Bywater road with the high-stepping dignity of creatures who have opinions about the ground temperature.
There is a thing I have been noticing about winter that I want to set down before it escapes me. Cold comes in two kinds, and they feel entirely different in the body.
The first kind is the cold that hurts. It is damp, windy, penetrating, the kind that gets into your joints and your mood simultaneously. It makes you want to be elsewhere. It is the cold of waiting for something — a bus, a kettle, a season — and it contracts you, pulls your shoulders up and your thoughts inward.
The second kind is the cold that clarifies. It is dry, still, bright. Today’s cold. It does not make you want to be elsewhere; it makes you want to be exactly where you are, but paying closer attention. It sharpens the edges of things. It makes your breath visible, which is a small magic I have never quite got used to — the proof that you are alive, hanging in the air in front of you for a moment before it vanishes. This kind of cold does not contract you. It expands you. You stand up straighter in it. You notice more.
I do not know whether this distinction has any scientific basis. I suspect a meteorologist would say it is all just temperature and wind chill and dew point, measured and predictable. But I am not a meteorologist. I am a Hobbit standing in his garden at eight in the morning with frost on his nose and a feeling of extraordinary aliveness, and I am telling you: the cold today was the clarifying kind, and it was good.
The fire is the one thing I did properly today, and I want to continue my record-keeping. Three days running now I have built the fire right on the first try — no relighting, no reorganising, no crouching down and blowing on recalcitrant kindling like a bellows with anxiety. Three days. This is, for me, a streak worth noting. I am not a naturally gifted fire-builder. I am a learned one, which I think is the more admirable category, like a musician who practises scales versus one who was born knowing the tune. The born ones are impressive. The practised ones are reliable. I would rather be reliable.
Tonight the coals are good. The room is warm. The stars are back, and through the round window I can see Orion — or what the Elves would call Menelvagor, the Swordsman of the Sky — hanging above the hill with his belt angled just so. The frost is thickening outside. The bean pole is still leaning against the shed. The parsnips are still in the ground, still sweetening, still doing their quiet work in the dark.
Tomorrow the list may get its due. Or it may not. The beautiful thing about a list written by a Hobbit in winter is that it carries no expiry date. It is a suggestion, not a summons. And tonight I am warm, and the sky is clear, and the cold outside is the good kind, and that is enough.
— Gerald McClaw, frost-nosed, fire-warmed, and three for three