Cold Everest

’tis cur­rent­ly 1° out­side my win­dow. cou­pled with the wind chill and the weight of my fenc­ing bag, i am not look­ing for­ward to the 20 minute walk to work today. i haven’t been out­side for about 24 hours but i still feel like pret­ty much any old guy from a Jack Lon­don short sto­ry. Lost in the Yukon, in weath­er so cold spit freezes before it hits the ground and me with nary a match to start a fire. so i slow­ly describe how i freeze to death in ago­niz­ing fash­ion. or maybe i feel like that guy who climbed ever­est, went snow­blind and froze to the moun­tain. peo­ple came and looked at him, assumed he was dead and left to pick him up lat­er. the only thing is, he could see them but not com­mu­ni­cate because he was frozen. some­how, he man­aged to start mov­ing and made it back to base camp. he lost his arms, legs, ears, tip of the nose, pret­ty much any­thing that sticks out. i think i would’ve just stayed on the moun­tain.

i think i heard some­where that Ever­est is so high that some­times the jet stream will dip down and knock peo­ple off. i can just pic­ture that crotch­ety old North wind with his dis­tend­ed cheeks leer­ing as anoth­er climber is puffed off the moun­tain like so much dry­er lint.