Why These Trees Are Ominous

The sudden chill consists of the winter's shock troops, paratroopers, special forces agents and saboteurs, softening up the enemy lines of warm skin and happier months before the main artillery bombardment and infantry deployments of snow and ice. It arises as an unrelenting, bone-chilling grip, clawing us into submission, into slower movement, into inactivity and pessimism.

"It's too cold to do anything," is the first telling sign that the defender's morale has weakened, and should be combatted with all manner of propaganda, from picture postcards of milder climes to thicker blanks and larger buckets of soup, hot Coco Puffs, and chowder. Microwaves must be turned on full blast, doors open, and ovens must be timed to coincide with morning prayers for deliverance. And those traitorous bare trees: chop them down and burn them, for they deserve life no longer after the long autumn's callow display of foliage surrender. The woods are the occupied territory now, losing their congenial scenic comforts to become the bastion of the Frigid from which we flee.

It seems odd to consider this cold a living, active, agentic creature, but what else could explain this sudden evil, this swiping of our legs out from under us, this reduction of our ability to function in the fresh air? It is an ever-present monstrosity, residing in caged pockets -- AC, meat lockers, valley nightfall -- in the summer, slowly plotting its reconquest of our section of the planet once the sun stops paying attention. In theory, warmth should always be with us, the earth's vast thickness should be enough to absord the sun throughout the year's middle months, and radiate it back to us as the axis tilts upwards. Not so. Sun and Freeze are in cahoots, I am sure of it, blasting us with alternating currents of Red and Blue, watching us dance, watching us fall down defeated, and back all over again.

So where does the warmth retreat once the Invader begins His annual insurgency? It is in you, in slender small pockets of flesh and thinking, in book reading and financial planning, in liqueor drinking and drum playing, in flute finding and lager surveying, in catastrophe managing and infestation wrangling, in moms and dads and grandkids and uncles playing brightly-colored board games in the shivering parlors of the damned.

You are the resistance: keep your musket flames lit.