On Monday, windchills in the Finger Lakes were between minus 15 and minus 25. The temperature without the wind was in the low single digits, and because I like to think of myself as a weather tough-ass, I have tended to discount windchill as not really part of the cold equation. I cannot explain this in any rational fashion. If I look at the thermometer, or pass a bank thermometer, and it reads, say -14, then I'll think, "Ok. That's cold." But let the bank sign in the small town where I live read 7, and I'll think, "Oh, it's not that cold. Don't be a wimp." Even if the car is being blown sideways across the yellow lines.

The only thing I can liken it to is the people around here who insist on distinguishing between "just lake effect" snow and "real" snow. Now, real snow is when some Nor'easter blows up the coast and the system inevitably stalls right over us. At that point, we'll get pounded—10 to 20 to 30 inches of snow that will fall over the course of 24-48 hours. Depending on the rate of snow, schools may or may not be closed. Around here, it's become sort of a point of acceptance that unless a meteorite crashes into the district building, the public schools will not close in Ithaca. They can be closed in every district in the I-81 corridor between Scranton and Watertown; unless the superintendent can't get her car out of her driveway, the rest of us are going to have to drive our kids in, or risk putting them on the busses, because there's no way you're letting your kid get lost in some snowdrift higher than her head. And Cornell? Years ago, when I was a graduate student there, Tompkins County declared a snow emergency and said that anyone caught driving after 12 pm would be arrested. (Snow was falling at a rate of 3-7 inches PER HOUR). Did Cornell close? No. The university stayed open, and I actually had a professor get mad at me because I called to say I could not present a paper at a seminar that afternoon because I didn't want to get arrested. "Well, can't you just walk?" he said. "Um. No. I live 7 miles from the university and it's 17 degrees below zero right now." He hung up on me in a huff.

Lake-effect snow, of course, is the frozen precipitation that gets picked up by being blown across large bodies of water. Ithaca gets some lake effect; Cayuga Lake is large enough to generate some. If the conditions are right, we can get lake effect off Erie or Ontario. But we don't get the sort of lake effect that once dumped 94 inches in 48 hours on Massena a few years back. I'm sure that the people trying to dig out would be glad to know that a lot of folks around here consider that "just lake effect" snow.

So, on Monday, when I saw that the temperatures were in the low positive numbers, I decided that because I had a first-class case of cabin fever and my ass had grown to epic proportions because I had not gotten any exercise (save shoveling, endlessly shoveling the driveway) in a few days, it was time for a walk. And not the wimpy short walk of three miles that I do when I'm feeling lazy; nope. I was doing the full five miles. I dressed carefully: a layer of long-sleeved, full-legged silky long underwear, wool socks, fleece pants, long-sleeved shirt, wool turtleneck, down coat, hat, scarf, and a hood on my coat. No gloves. I own four pairs of gloves, three of which have been destroyed by Tillie the Hibiscus-Eater, who stalks and kills my gloves. I frequently hear her mewing triumphantly as she carries some shredded piece of my latest pair of gloves in her mouth. This time, I hid the gloves from her; unfortunately, I haven't been able to find them since. No problem. I had deep pockets on my coat and I could also pull my sleeves over my hands. They'd be fine. I have a pair of kick-ass insulated boots.

I grabbed my iPod and walked out of the house. It was 3:30; 2 hours of sunlight remaining. The first thing I noticed was that many of my neighbors had given up the ghost when it came to shoveling their sidewalks. No problem. It just meant that I would get a better workout by having to dig my feet into the icy snow to avoid slipping. And as it turned out, most of the snow had had the excess moisture wrung right out of it. I could hear the snow squeaking under my feet. Snow squeaks somewhere down around 0 degrees F. I suppose some chemist could tell me about the effects of sublimation and extreme cold on your basic H-2-0 molecule, but honestly, I'd probably drift off halfway through the explanation. The other thing I've noticed is that the hair inside your nostrils freezes at 0, too. The first time I experienced my nose hairs turning into icicles every time I inhaled, I thought it was kind of freaky. Now, it's become a sign that winter has really arrived, sort of the same way that some folks treat seeing a robin as the first sign that spring has really arrived. This year, winter didn't arrive until mid-January; in previous years, I've experienced frozen nose hairs in late October, so I cannot bitch that it's cold now. And yet, well, I will.

So, I set off. The first part of the walk was climbing a pretty moderate hill, and I started to get cocky. I was hot, and I removed my hood, unzipped my coat, and removed my scarf from my face. It's not that cold, I thought. I wish I hadn't put so many clothes on. It was a different story when I crested the hill, however. Two things happened. The small neighborhood I had been walking in disappeared, and with it whatever wind break had been provided by the houses lining the street. The second thing was that I crested the hill and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. Back went all of the clothes. Whatever heat my body had stored that first mile or so dissipated rapidly, and when I hit the point where I could turn around and make this the three-mile wimp walk, I decided to go forward, into the fucking cold, icy wind and finish the walk I had intended to.

As is my wont when I'm walking, I was listening to tunes, but I was also thinking, and observing. In the empty fields that lined the road, I watched snow dervishes lift up from the ground, twirl madly, and then suddenly collapse. Along the road, I could have believed myself to be in a gothic horror novel. The snow seemed to rise from the road like a fog, but, pushed along by the wind, it looked like streams of powder, skimming the surface of the tarmac that was no longer black, but that dirty grey that comes from having been repeatedly salted, frozen, and re-salted.

As I walked, I thought a lot about the past few months. Not just Yves' death, although even three months after, he flits through my mind at least once a day. Sometimes joyously, sometimes sadly, and sometimes, in dark moments, a memory of the trauma will try to shoulder its way into my consciousness. I close my eyes then, and wait until the thought goes away.

As I walked, it was so cold that even though I was walking at a good pace, I felt certain muscles in my hips and thighs begin to cramp from the cold. I pulled my scarf up higher on my face when I realized that I could not feel a patch of skin on my cheek—and I just knew that frostbite on my face would look pretty fucking ugly so I needed to take care of that. And still, I kept walking. I had to get to the signpost that was the designated turnaround spot.

I have had winter paralysis. The short hours of sunlight, the cold, the clouds, the death of a lover, the feeling that I had nothing of importance to say, has all contributed to my inability to open up the computer and begin to type out the things that are important to me. I have so much anger right now. What's happening in the blogosphere—the complete betrayal of smaller blogs by the mixture of red-yellow blog has pissed me off, but even more, the slapdown of uppity women bloggers by the Catholic League, and John Edwards' not-so-spirited defense of free speech, has enraged me.

The walk turned out to be long and cold. But breathing air cold enough to burn a hole through my brain has freed something up in me. Look for me to write more in the coming days.

And by the way? When I got back to the house, I climbed into a hot shower and stayed there for about 20 minutes. I didn't have frostbite, but my thighs burned for about three hours afterward from windburn. Sometimes, it takes acts of stupidity to wake me the fuck up. I'm awake now.