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The image is only two days old. Last night it snowed twice that much, well over half a foot on the lee side of the rocky hill we call a driveway. Today was mostly sunny and cold, really cold, in the teens until almost noon. (It’s 12 °F as I write, an hour before midnight.) I dug paths to the car and the wood pile, but the tiny frozen grains of snow blew constantly and re-arranged themselves, filling in behind me. And did I mention it was cold?

That kind of cold and wind does something to my body. Reacting to the existential threat? I want to eat and sleep and wake up someplace else, but mostly sleep. This living-on-the-frontier schtick has ruined me for normal life, but I could try it anyway. Imagine being able to go into any room of the house and still be warm! For that matter, imagine a house with rooms. Sometimes I feel superior and worldly, knowing of these things. I’m proud of my survival skills. I can keep a wood stove going all day long. On other days, I’m a two-cylinder idiot.

But it’s cozy in the old adobe. We almost never hear an outside sound. The wood stove keeps the main living area at seventy degrees (21°C). My desk is in the cold room where anxious mail and documents go to die. I walk around barefoot and pretend to work. The kitchen is five steps away, the sofa two. I’ve been in trouble for so long, this looks like paradise. For all I know, it is.

What then?

The pressure’s on. Where’s it coming from? Aieee! I haven’t been wound so tight since what, three days ago?

Today I spent the entire day cleaning one small room, the one we call the “saloon” because it has an actual bar of sorts and of course the wood stove and a sofa. The dust was so thick in the corners, it was growing from the bottom up like stalagmites. I couldn’t stand the filthy dusty books and piles of magazines, as well as other junk, so I piled them in the living room next to my desk. (Of course I left a path, what do you think?) Now I’ll have to sort them out, box them up, and pretend there’s room inside the storage unit. As my wife said, “To what purpose?”

“To keep them, of course,” I said, because that was easier than admitting I’d be scared to part with books I haven’t touched in thirty years or more—hell, I just saw one I last opened in ’71! But what if I need to look something up tomorrow, eh? Then what? I can’t be trusted in these matters. You’d find me just as reluctant to throw away old work boots that don’t fit right any more. I must have at least three pairs of those.

Anyway, the saloon feels airy, clean, and sane. Nothing else does, but you have to eat your kibble where you find it.

A few days ago I was wound tighter than puke, loco, in the clutches of the Christmas monster. Fortunately, that passed, but by Saturday morning, I was overdue to take a hike. I hadn’t walked in several days, and already I could feel my knee-bones start to wander. They have their nerve.

It was a stormy hike: cloudy and windy with spitty little raindrops, then a deluge of graupel that wet the trail just enough to make that sticky mud like bubble gum. I only saw one other person on the trail at Taos Valley Overlook. There was also an older van parked weirdly in the lot, as if they’d driven in at midnight and run the vehicle into an embankment. Probably sleeping off some awful drugs or drunk. The windows were fogged up and I saw blankets. Whatever you do, don’t knock.

That afternoon it snowed, huge flakes the size of money no one recognizes any more. Most of that melted, the temperature being just above the freezing mark. A few minutes before sunset, the sun broke through in the west the way it usually does, and I could take a picture. The road of course is ghastly, and no one gives a damn.

One way or the other, that is a true statement. I’ve learned more about myself and this old place than I can stand, and when the love of my life asks me whether she’s going to die here, we are definitely out of bounds. My answer was of course, “I certainly hope not!”—and now to hunker down once more.