this is -47

On campus at the University of Manitoba. We’re currently under an extreme cold warning with wind chill temperatures between -40 and -47 and this the view from my door (which was open for about five seconds!)

I’d forgotten how your chest clutches and it’s as if you can’t breathe because the air freezes your nose hairs within a minute and the snow crunches under your feet and you’re buried in layers and shuffle about like overstuffed sheep and the air is clear and so so bright and all you want to do is breathe in the light.

I’d forgotten the smell of cold, block-like and hard, sharp with a pinch, like sniffing an icecube dry. I’d forgotten how you can see when you speak, the words swirling like tendrils around your face, and the way your voice creaks against the ice, a cough forming in your throat, phrases shivering and tight.

I’d forgotten the blue, the white, the crisp outlines of a cloudless sky, the sparkle and the wind, how all you want to do is touch: feel the heavens cerulean, run snow like sand through fingers with your face touch the bite.  

I’d forgotten this prairie the endlessness, the light. The distances of the landscape and the undulations of snow. I’d forgotten how dawn breaks with orange and pink and the flat horizon stretching beyond.

I’d forgotten this winter, so brutal so beautiful.

I’m writer-in-residence at the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba this winter, and I’m loving this opportunity to really dig deep into my writing and dreaming, and to commune with the prairie landscape: I lived in Alberta between the ages of 6 and 17, and there is something about wide open spaces and low horizons that I can’t explain. I’m not venturing far during our extreme cold warning, but once it warms up a bit… you can bet I’ll be out and about and breathing in the prairies.