diana cowgill

Today was oppressively hot. Unbearably hot. 105 degrees hot. All I could think was, if I had a fever this high I would be plunged into an ice bath, which sounded heavenly. Today was just the worst day. But what about the alternative?

I’m not ashamed to say that I spent some time in Northern New England. We do weird things in college. We experiment with lifestyles that may not be right for us in the long run but that we’ve got to try while we’re still young. That was Maine for me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I suffered while I was in Maine. I suffered more than I could put into words. I am a finicky, sensitive person. My circulation isn’t good. My limbs are skeletal; pale, stretched appendages with long skinny fingers and long crooked toes wriggling away at the ends. I grew up with consistently good weather, and I had no idea.

My first morning in Maine, the cold literally took my breath away. My dad and I stayed at a hotel in Portland the night before my campus tour, and that evening a sprinkling of snow fell. From the comfort of my warm room, I marveled at how magical the place was. It looked like this beautiful old cobble-stoned city had been dusted with powdered sugar. There was no color. No impurities. The shapes were obscured; the angles softened and none of the lines quite straight. Anything ugly isn’t when it’s under a few inches of virgin snow, and I thought, this is just the way I hoped it would be.

The next morning much of the magic was sucked from the world. Virgin snow turns grey, and Maine mornings turn awful. We stepped out of the heated lobby into the carport, and breathed in the crispness. The crispness very nearly undid me. I choked. I had never encountered anything that cold. My body and Maine were off each other by ninety degrees. My lungs compulsively expelled the breath. Spat it out like water, like smoke; something foreign they knew I had no business drawing in. My face stung with the cold. The chill made my muscles contract and my skin recede. My bones felt barely covered, exposed to the relentless, unbearable, unreasonable Maine wind.

My father commented on how much he liked a good, brisk morning, that New England is actually a whole lot colder than regular England, and that I had better get used to it

I think of that first truly shocking experience, and of later times, and I feel somehow better about the ferocious heat. I dreamt of days like this when I was in Maine. Dreamt of taking walks, of hearing birds through open windows. I dreamt of shorts, of dry feet, of barbeques and of being able to do things as slowly as I wanted. The heat is stifling and heavy and still, but the cold is vicious.

Also, when it’s hot like this, I have the perfect excuse to gorge on Pinkerry.